1^ 



CONDENSED ANTI-SLAVERY 



BIBLE ARGUMENT; 



JBY A CITIZEN OP VIRGINIA. 



^ Wo to them that call evil good, and good evil," &e. — Tta. v. 30. 

" To the law and to the testimony," &c. — fsa. vii. 20. 

" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." — TTitai. v. 21. 



NEW YORK: 
PRINTED BY S. W. BENEDICT, 

NO. 16 SPRUCE STREET. 
1845. 



ANTI-SLAVERY 



BIBLE AEGUMEIT 



CONDENSED ANTI-SLAVERY 



BIBLE ARGUMENT; 



BY A CITIZEN OF VIRGINIA. 



" Wo to them that call evil good, and good evil," &c. — laa. v. 20. 

" To the law and to the testimony," &c. — Isa. vii. 20. 

" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good."— TA***. v. 21. 



NEW YORff 
PRINTED BY S. W. BENEDICT, 

NO. 16 SPRUCE STREET. 
1845. 



"/< '/-:' 



in. ^■ 






A Co 



^' ^ CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

DEFINITIONS 7 

CHAPTER II. 

MAN-STEALING. ......... 9 

CHAPTER III. 

PERVERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES 21 

CHAPTER IV. 

CASE OF CAIN. . . ; 23 

CHAPTER V, 

CASE OF CANAAN. . . • 24 

CHAPTER VI. 

RULES OF CONSTRUCTION. ....... 26 

CHAPTER VII. 

USES OF THE WORDS " BUy" AND " SELL." . . . 27 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAOS 

THE TRUE ISSUE. 30 

CHAPTER IX. 

KEY TO THE INQUIRY. ....... 31 

CHAPTER X. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. . . 34< 

Examination of Gen. xii. 5, xvii. 12, 13, 23, 27 ; xx. 14 ; xxiv. 3-5. 

CHAPTER XI. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. . 37 

Examination of Ex. xii. 43, 45, xx. 17, xxi. 2—6, 7, 11, 20, 21; 
Deut. XV. 12—18, xxi. 10, 14. 

CHAPTER XII . 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. . . 44* 

Examination of Lev. xxv. 39 — 43, 44 — 46, 47 — 54. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. . 49 

Examination of Deut. xx. 10—20; Josh. ix. 22, 23, 27; 1 Kings ix. 
21, 2fi ; 2 Kings iv. 1, &c. ; Neh. v. 5—13 ; Jer. xxxiv. 8—17. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. . . . . .53 

CHAPTER XV. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NKW TESTAMENT. . 66 

CHAPTER XVI. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. . . 72 

Examination of Matt. xx. 28, xxvi. 28; Acts xx. 28; Rom. vii. 14; 
1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23 ; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, 3 ; Rev. v. 9, &c. 



CONTENTS. V 

CHAPTER XVII. 

PA6B 

PRO-SLAVERT PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. . . 73 

Examination of Matt, xviii. 23, 25, xxii. 27 ; Rom. xiii. 1 — 7 ; 
Titus iii. 1 ; 1 Pet. ii. 13. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. ^ 77 

Examination of Eph. vi. 5 — 9 ; Col. iii. 22 — 25, iv. 1 ; Titus ii. 9, 10 ; 
1 Tim. vi. 1 i 1 Pet. ii. 18—20. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

PRO-SLAVKRY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. . . 82 

Examination of the Epistle to Philemon. 

CHAPTER XX. 

CONCLUSION REFLECTIONS. . . . . . .85 



A CONDENSED 

AITI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMEIT, 



INTRODUCTION. 

The belief was long nearly universal, and is yet very gene- 
ral throughout the Christian world, that the Scriptures do, to some 
extent, justify human slavery, as practised in this country. The 
object of the following chapters is to controvert this belief, and to 
prove that it is false and heretical, as well as dangerous and destruc- 
tive to human happiness ; that this belief is founded entirely on 
perversions of the true meaning of certain passages in the Scrip- 
tures, and is entirely contrary to the spirit of the divine volume, 
the letter of which condemns the practice with as much seve- 
rity as it did that of any other crime. The following argument 
is presented for the calm and prayerful consideration of all Chris- 
tians, both in the J^orth and in the South. The time has come when 
(as a learned writer justly remarks*), " neither the evidences of the 
Gospel, nor the solemnities of religion ; neither the constitution of 
the church, nor the rights of its members ; neither the divine right 
of bishops, nor the value of holy orders ; neither the spirituality of 
the soul, nor the materiality of the body, can escape the ordeal of 
free and full discussion. Shall we, then, think it strange that Ame- 
rican slavery, with all its influences on the moral and political des- 
tinies of this great and mighty nation, shall, by the spontaneous con- 
cession of the whole civilized world, be allowed to escape inquiry, 
or be exempt from appearing in the presence of this august and 
powerful tribunal of Free Discussion'? It cannot be imagined. 
Come it must, and come it will ; and we may as well be prepared 
for it soon as late." 

• Millennial Harbinger, vol. ii., § 3, p. 50, 
2 



6 



INTRODUCTION. 



Do not, kind reader, throw this aside, as the production of an Abo- 
litionist^ but read it as the candid convictions of " A Citizen of 
Virginia," who has thought much on the subject, and examined 
critically the Bible with reference to his duty and obligations to 
those unfortunate beings who are held in bondage. My treating of 
the difficult, and to many, offensive subject of slavery, does notarise 
from any want of attachment to the South, or any disregard to its 
interests, much less does it arise from a disposition to trifle with the 
wishes or fears of those who may have fears on this matter. If I 
believed that discussion would have the effect that some apprehend 
from it, it would be with me a weighty consideration against ever 
publishing one line on the subject. But after looking at the matter 
on all sides, and giving it a good deal of consideration, I am strongly 
inclined to the opinion that the danger attending slavery in the 
South depends very little, if at all, on a temperate discussion of the 
subject. 

A multitude of things must ever bind my affections to the South. 
I was born on the banks of Virginia's beautiful river Potomac, where 
my parents spent a considerable portion of their existence, almost 
in sight of the place where the mortal remains of Washington are 
deposited. Almost all my relations are there, or in slaveholding 
states. All my early associations, all those untold bonds that bind 
us to the scenes of infancy and youth, most of those moral ties 
which unite us to those we love, for whom we have often prayed, 
and with whom we have taken " sweet counsel together, and walk- 
ed unto the house of God in company" — are Virginians. 

" With all thy faults I love thee still, my country — and still must love thee." 

Fellow-citizens, examine with me this important subject — and 
follow the guidance of the " lamp of life" in the path of duty, which 
is the sure road to Heaven. And let us remember "the example 
of Virginia's noblest son, the Father of his country, who at the 
last hour, when the soul, in the light of an approaching eter- 
nity, sees with peculiar clearness the boundaries which separate the 
wrong from the right, restored his slaves to their natural rights.'''' 
And let us imitate one of Kentucky's bright stars, C. M. Clay, who 
in the face of all opposition emancipated thirteen slaves, while yet 
in health of mind and body. 



CHAPTER 1 . 

DEFINITIONS. 

In order the better to understand the subject it is necessary here 
to introduce a few plain definitions. Slavery has two definitions 
— the direct and the indirect. The first of these is that it is 
the total deprivation of human rights ; the other that it is the reduc- 
ing of human beings to the condition of property, the same as 
other goods, wares, merchandise and chattels. Either of these 
definitions will answer for the purpose of argument, though 
the latter is to be preferred, because it is the most familiar. 
There are a variety of other ways in which mankind hold 
control over each other, and sometimes unjustly and oppressively ; 
but if the persons controlled be not held as property, they are not 
slaves. A Right is defined to be, the privilege or liberty of being, 
doing, having, or suffering something at our own pleasure and discre- 
tion without the interference, interruption or hindrance of others — 
and to this discretion neither the law of God, nor the common law, 
nor any other just law, sets any other bounds than that we so exer- 
cise our own rights as not to infringe the same rights in other human 
beings. A Wrong is defined to be, any voluntary act which dis- 
turbs, interrupts, hinders, or destroys the free exercise of the rights 
of others — every such act being strictly forbidden by the law of 
God, and every other just law. Right and Wrong are, therefore, 
the everlasting moral and political opposites and antagonists of each 
other. Mr. Weld, in his valuable " Bible Argument," says, " En- 
slaving MEN IS REDUCING THEM TO ARTICLES OF PROPERTY mak- 
ing free agents, chattels — converting persons into things — sinking 
immortality into merchandize. A slave is one held in this condition. 
In law, he owns nothing and can acquire nothing." His right to 
himself is abrogated. If he says my hands, my body, my mind, my- 
self, they are figures of speech. To use himself for his own good 
is a crime. To keep what he earns is stealing. To take his body 
into his own keeping is insurrection. In a word, the profit of his 
master is made the end of his being, and he a mere means to that 



8 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

end — a mere means to an end into which his interests do not enter- 
of which they constitute no portion. Man sunk to a thing! the 
intrinsic element, the principle of slavery. Men, bartered, leased, 
mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped in cargoes, stored as 
goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at public outcry ! 
Their ?7g/i^5, another's conveniences ; their interests, wares on sale 5 
their happiness, a household utensil ; their personal inalienable 
ownership, a serviceable article or a plaything, as best suits the 
humor of the hour ; their deathless nature, conscience, social affec- 
tions, sympathies, hopes — marketable commodities ! We repeat it, 
" The reduction of persons to things !" Not robbing a man of 
privileges, but oi himself ; not loading him with burdens, but mak- 
ing him a beast of burden ; not restraining liberty, but subverting it ; 
not curtailing rights, but abolishing them ; not inflicting personal 
cruelty, but annihilating personality ; not exacting involuntary 
labor, but sinking man into an implement of labor ; not abridging 
human comforts, but abrogating human nature ; not depriving an 
animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational being of attributes, 
uncreating a man to make room for a thing ! That this is American 
slavery is shown by the laws of the slave states. Judge Stroud, 
in his "Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery," says, "The cardi- 
nal principle of slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among 
sentient beings but among things, obtains as undoubted law in all 
of these (the slave) states." The law of South Carolina says,* 
" Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed and adjudged in 
law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and posses- 
sors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, 
constructions, and purposes whatsoever." 

In Louisiana, " A slave is one who is in the power of a mas- 
ter, to whom he belongs ; the master may sell him, dispose of his 
person, his industry and his labor ; he can do nothing, possess no- 
thing, nor acquire anything but what belongs to his master. Civ. 
Code, Art. 35." Tried by these definitions, human slavery is one of 
the greatest wrongs existing in the world. 

♦ Br«v. Dig., 220. 



CHAPTER II. 



MAN-STEALING. 



The practice of human slavery is not condemned in the Scrip- 
tures by that name, nor mentioned in any of our common law 
definitions by the same name. But it is condemned in the Scrip- 
tures under other names, and by descriptions, plainly and severely. 
There are many modern practices, such as piracy, duelling, gam- 
bling, &c., which are not condemned in the Scriptures by those 
names, but by descriptions. In this way, though all the crimes 
against God and his religion have been legalised by men in this 
world, they are all plainly described and condemned in the Scrip- 
tures, so that mankind are without any moral or just excuse for 
committing them. But that the practice of human slavery is thus 
condemned, is plainly proven, as follows : — 

I. By our slaveholding definitions, human slavery is described 
as property in man, and slaves are declared to be the property of 
their masters or owners, and cannot own, possess, or enjoy anything 
but what belongs to their owners. But by our common law defi- 
nitions, human slavery is compounded of the crimes of kidnapping, 
assault and battery, and false imprisonment. 

In ^Ex. xxi. 16 is a short description of the kidnapping and sale 
of one person by another, described as "man-stealing," the same 
being an entirely different transaction from the voluntary sales of 
servants by themselves, as described in ^Gen. xlvii. 19 — 23, ^Ex. xxi. 

1 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall 
surely be put to death. — Ex. xxi. 16. 

'- Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our 
land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh : and give us seed, 
that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate. And Joseph bought all 
the laml of Egypt for Pharaoh ; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because 
the famine prevailed over them : so the land became Pharaoh's. And as for the peo- 
ple, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other 
end thereof. Only the land of the priests bought he not ; for the priests had a portion 
assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them ; where- 
fore they sold not their lands. Then Joseph said vmto the people, Behold, I have 
bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh : lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall 
sow the land. — Gen. xlvii. 19 — 23. 

3 If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve : and in the seventh he shall 
go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself : if he were 
married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a Wife 
and she have bonie him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her mas- 
ter's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servaut shall plainly say, I loTe my 



10 ANTI-SLAVERY EIELE ARGUMENT. 

2 — 6, ^Lev. XXV. 39 — 47, ^Deut. xv. 12, &c. By force of this one 
short Levitical statute, the act of man-stealing (kidnapping), man- 
selling (slave-trading), and man-holding (slaveholding), are, like 
several other crimes, condemned by the Levitical law ; declared by 
the statute to be punishable with sure death — it being very remark- 
able that the sentence of punishment is expressed in the strong- 
est terms, see ^Lev. xxiv. 17, 2 Numb. xxxv. 30, 31, &c. ; 
thereby indicating that, in the sight of God, these acts are equal to 
the greatest crimes in guilt and enormity. The statute is also 
highly descriptive of property in man, or slavery ; for one adult 
person seldom ever seizes and sells another, or holds him in subjec- 
tion to himself, except as an article of property, or as a slave. 

II. But if there could be a reasonable doubt of the intent to de- 
scribe a property or slavish title, by the acts condemned in the fore- 
going statute, it is entirely dispelled'y the description of the same 
crime in ^Deut. xxiv. 7 ; where, in addition to the other descrip- 
tion, the crime is still further described as the " making merchan- 
dise" of the person stolen, as men seldom " make merchandise of," 
or trade, or traffic in anything which they do not regard and treat as 

master, my wife, and my children ; T wlII not go out free : then his master shall bring 
him unto the judges : he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post : and 
his master shall bore his ear through with an awl ; and he shall serve him for ever. — 
Ex. xxi. 2—6. 

* And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee ; 
thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant. But as a hired servant, and 
as a sojouruer he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee: 
And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall re- 
turn unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For 
they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt ; they shall not 
be sold as bond-men. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear thy God. 
Both thy bond-men, and thy bond-maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the hea- 
then that are round about you ; of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. 
Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall 
ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land : and 
they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your 
children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-men for 
ever : but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another 
■with rigor. And if a sojourner or a stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that 
dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or 
to the stock of the stranger's family : — Lev. xxv. 39 — 47. 

5 And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and 
serve thee six years ; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. — 
Deut. XV. 12. 

i And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. — Lev. xxiv. 17. 

2 Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of 
witnesses : but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. 
Moreover, ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of 
death : but'he shall surely be put to death. — Numb. xxxv. 30, 31. 

3 If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and mak- 
eth merchandise of him, or sclleth him ; then that thief shall die ; and thou shalt put 
evil away from among you. — Deut. xxiv. 7. 



MAN-STEALING. ' 11 

property. It is true, that the same phrase has a different meaning 
in 1 2 Peter ii. 3, but what puts our interpretation of the principal 
text beyond a doubt, is the fact that the criminal is described as a 
" thief," for real thieves never steal anything but what they consi- 
der property, and which they hold, " mdve merchandise of," and 
otherwise treat as property. We know by the description of 
" feigned words," or false and deceitful religious instruction, used 
in 2 Peter ii. 3, that the foregoing phrase is there used to describe 
ecclesiastical oppression, such as is condemned in -Matt, xxiii. 4 — 14, 
and other passages, and has been practised in every age of the 
Christian church, and by nothing, perhaps, in so high and destruc- 
tive a degree, as by the false instruction, that human slavery is mo- 
rally justified by the Scriptures. 

III. The subject is perfectly illustrated in the seizure and sale of 
Joseph by his brethren to the Ishmaelites, and by the latter to Poti- 
phar, 3 (Jen. xxxvii. 23, 28, 36. Here is a case described at 
length, of the forcible seizure'or kidnapping of one person by others, 
of his sale as an article of merchandise or property by them to others 
still for money, and of the subsequent sale of him as property by 
the purchasers to another, all exactly as our slave seizures, and sales, 
and purchases are now made. Thi^ transaction is represented in 

1 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of 
you : whose judgment now of a long time lingcreth not, and their damnation slumber- 
eth not.— 2 Pet. ii. 3. 

■■J For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's 
shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all 
their works they do for to be seen of men : they make broad their phylacteries, and 
enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and 
the chief seats m the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of 
men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi : for one is your Master, even Christ ; 
and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth ; for one is your 
Father which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters : for one is your Master, 
even Christ. But he that is greatest among you, shall be your servant. And whoso- 
ever shall exalt himself, shall be abased ; and he that shall humble himself shall be 
exalted. But wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for j^e shut up the king- 
dom of heaven against men : for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them 
that are entering to go in. Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye 
devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer : therefore ye shall re- 
ceive the greater damnation. — Matt, xxiii. 4 — 14. 

3 And it came to pass when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped 
Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colors that was on him. And they took him 
and cast him into a pit : and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. And they 
sat down to eat bread : and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold a compa- 
ny of Ishmaelites came from GUead, with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and 
myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren, What 
profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood ! Come, and let us sell him 
to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him ; for he is our brother, 
and our flesh : and his brethren were content. Then there passed by Mid- 
ianites, merchantmen ; and they drew up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the 
Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver : and they brought Joseph into Egypt. And 
the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and cap- 
tain of the guard. — Gen. xxxvii." 23 — 28, 36. 



12 



ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 



^ Gen. xlii. 21, 22, as worthy of the punishment of death in those 
guilty of it, as a self-evident and enormous crime against the law of 
Nature. In Joseph's own description of the transaction he states 
that he was " stolen,'''' ^ Gen. xl. 15. The crime committed upon him 
was, therefore, stealing, and as he was a man that crime was " man- 
stealing," the nature and consequences of which were precisely the 
same as those which everywhere uniformly attend the practice of 
human slavery, or in other words, they are each precisely the same 
crime. It should be remarked in further illustration, that the bar- 
barities and horrors which uniformly attend the practice of human 
slavery, as incidents to it, absolutely necessary to its support, are 
not recorded in this case as a part of the great crime so severely 
condemned. Notwithstanding his " anguish of soul," Gen. xlii. 
21, we do not know but Joseph was as "well treated" as the 
best conditioned- of our slaves now are. The whole moral guilt 
of the transaction is represented in the passage quoted, as consisting 
in the conversion of Joseph into an article of property, or rendering 
him a slave. This case is also highly instructive by its teaching us 
that human slavery is as great a crime against the law of nature, as 
it is against the Scriptures or law of Revelation. The latter not 
having been revealed to the Patriarchs, they were left to the guid- 
ance furnished by the dim light of the former, in consequence of 
which they committed many crimes, against both of these laws, of 
which they did not become sensible till they were brought into 
deep trouble by the same. 

By similar means the strongest advocates of human slavery may 
be convinced of its deep natural as well as revealed criminality, and 
it is indeed often the last argument that can be effectually used with 
such persons. Let them and their relations and friends be but once 
enslaved themselves, and they will as readily see and acknowledge 
the natural and moral guilt of the practice, as Joseph's brethren did. 

IV. T^e same doctrine is also evident from the literal meaning of 
the Greek word andrapodistai, translated " men-stealers," ^ 1 Tim. 
i. 10, as well as from the class of crimes connected with it in that 

1 And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that 
we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear ; there- 
fore is this distress come upon us. And Reuben answered them, saying, Spake I not 
unto you saying. Do not sin against the child ; and ye would not hear ; therefore be- 
hold also his blood is required. — Gen. xlii. 21, 22. 

2 For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews : and here also have 
I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon. — Gen. xl. 15. 

3 For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men-steal- 
ers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to 
sound doctrine.— 1 Tim. 1. 10. 



MAN-STEALING. 



13 



and the preceding verse, for according to this connection, whatever 
man-stealing be, it is equal to murder and the greatest and worst of 
other crimes in enormity, and just as deserving of death by the Le- 
vitical or moral law. But this word (andrapodistai) literally means 
"slave-owners" or "slaveholders," as Greek readers well know, 
and ouo-ht to have been rendered " slaveholders" to have a literal 
English translation. The ancient Greek and Roman ^'■andrapo- 
distai'^ were bona fide slaveholders " to all intents, constructions 
and purposes," holding exactly the same relation to their slaves that 
our American slaveholders do to theirs, as ancient Greek and Ro- 
man history fully teslifies. But I do not complain of any perver- 
sion in the common English translation, for I have not the least 
doubt but what the men-stealers, men-sellers, men-buyers and men- 
holders described in ^Ex. xxi. 16, and^Deut. xxiv. 7, were bo?ia 
fide slaveholders, so that since man-stealing, &c., and human slavery 
are the same identical crime, either translation is correct ; nor do I 
care which translation our modern advocates of slavery prefer, for 
according to the literal spirit and meaning of the principal text and 
its connection, the practice of slavery is as great a crime as murder, 
&.C., and equally deserving the punishment of death as they are. 
The Greek word for slave is andrapoda (literally man foot, or, man- 
trodden under foot), while the word for " slaveholders" is andra- 
podistai (literally vien feet bwners or holders), exactly corresponding 
in meaning with our English words " slaves" and " slaveholders j" 
just as the practice of ancient Grecian slavery exactly corresponded, 
in every material respect, with that pursued in the United States. 
As human slavery is a practice entirely of heathen origin, it was to 
be expected that when it was adopted among Christians from the 
heathen, it would in a material respect be supported by the same 
means, appear the same thing both in practice and name, and so far 
as its influence extended heathenize those Christians that adopted it. 
V. The same doctrine is strongly corroborated by the language 
used in James v. 4, and its connection or context. " Behold the 
hire of the laborers which have reaped down your fields which is of 
you kept back by fraud, crieth ; and the cries of them which have 
reaped, are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth." Lan- 
guage like this imports death and destruction all over the Scriptures, 

1 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand he shall 
surely be put to death. — Ex. xxi. 16. 

2 If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and mak- 
eth merchandise of him, or selleth him ; then that thief shall die ; and thou shalt 
put evil away from among you. — Deut. xxiv. 7. 



14 ANTI-SLAVERY EICLE ARGUMENT. 

as punishments due to the greatest crimes only. In the wide Roman 
Empire, where most of the Apostles resided and preached, there 
were no other laborers except slaves but what were entitled to and 
received wages by law, so that the Apostle in this passage must have 
referred to slaves and to their condition and treatment alone, as evi- 
dence of the greatest criminality in their owners. And since the 
Apostle's language imports in the Scripture sense death and destruc- 
tion as punishment due to the greatest crimes only, we necessarily 
infer from such premises, as a plain Bible doctrine, that human 
slavery is a crime justly deserving the punishment of death in those 
who practise it. No opposite inference can be justly derived from 
the passage. 

VI. The same doctrine is also evident from the description of one 
of the crimes of the mystical " Mother of 'Harlots" in ^ Rev. xviii. 
13, which was "merchandise (that is trading in as property) * * * 
and slaves and souls of men," which so far as it goes is an exact 
description of human slavery. As death and destruction are repre- 
sented in this chapter as punishments justly due to those who pur- 
sue this kind of merchandise or traffic, we are also compelled to 
draw the same inference as the foregoing. This inference is strongly 
corroborated by the fact, that most of the objects enumerated in the 
passage are morally lawful subjects of trade and traffic, and as these 
terrible punishments were justly due for crime of some kind, they 
must at any rate have been for that of trading in slaves — a terrible 
warning to us not to pursue the practice of any mixture of good and 
evil. The mystical character here described is generally believed 
among Protestants to mean the Roman Catholic Church, and as a 
historical fact worthy of notice in this connection it is proper to 
state, that the practice of negro slavery among Christians, as veil as 
the scriptural perversions by which it was justified, first originated 
among the members of that Church, though as the same wicked 
practice and perversions were immediately adopted by the various 
Protestant sects, the inference has been drawn that they are the 
daughters of "the Mother of Harlots," ^Rev. xvii. 5, and will par- 
take of the punishment for her sins, so far as they have been guilty 
of her crimes. 

1 And cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and 
fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and 
souls of men. — Rev. xviii. 13. 

2 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE 
GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE 
EARTH.— Rev. xvii. 5. 



MAN-STEALING. 15 

VII. The same doctrine is also strongly to be inferred from the 
natural import of the language used in such passages as * Jer. xxii. 

13, 2 Hab. ii. 9-11; ^ Mai. iii. 5, &c.; where the compulsory labor of 
the poor and helpless without wages, as in the case of slaves, is 
threatened with the temporal if not the eternal destruction of those 
who practise this kind of oppression, such destruction as the scrip- 
tural use of the word " wo" always imports. Certainly these terri- 
ble passages include the case of oppressed slaves and their oppressive 
owners, if they do or can any case. So the depriving the poor and 
helpless of the wages justly due them for labor and other services 
performed, is everywhere denounced in the Scriptures as one of 
the greatest sins that men can commit, and as sure to be punished with 
the utter destruction of the criminals and their families and poster- 
ity, see ' Ex. xxii. 22-2i ; ^Lev.xix. 13; "^ Deut. xv. 9; Deut."?xxiv. 

14, 15 ; * Job xxvii. 13-23 ; ^ Prov. xxii. 22, 23, &c.; as these pas- 

I Wo unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by 
wrong ; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his 
worli. — Jer. xxii. 13. 

- Wo to him tliat coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his 
nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil ! Thou hast consulted 
shame to tliy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. 
For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer 
it.— Hab. ii. 9—11. 

3 And I Avill come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against 
the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those 
that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn 
aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.-Mal. iii. 5. 

•* Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any 
wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry ; and my wrath shall 
wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword ; and your wives shall be widows, and 
your children fatherless. — Ex xxii. 22 — 24 

■5 Tliou shall not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him : the wages of him that is 
hired sliall not abide with tiree all night until tlie morning. — Lev. xix. 13. 

6 Beware that there be uot a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh 
year, the year of release, isiit hand ; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, 
and thou givest him naught ; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin 
unto thee. — Deut. xv. 9. 

7 Tliou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of 
thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates : at his day 
thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he is poor, and 
setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto 
thee. — Deut. xsiv. 14, 15. 

8 This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, 
which they shall receive of the Almighty. If his children be multiplied, it is for the 
sword : and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. Those that remain of him 
sliall be buried in death : and his widows shall not weep. Though he heap up silver 
as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay ; he may prepare it, but the just shall 
put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. He buildeth his house as a moth, 
and as a booth that the keeper maketh. The rich man shall lie doum, but he shall 
not be gathered : he openeth his eyes, and he is not. Terrors take hold on him as 
waters, a tempest stealcth him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, 
and he departeth : and as a storm hurleth him out of liis place. For God shall cast 
upon him, and not spare ; he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their 
hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place. — Job xxvii. 13 — 23. 

9 Rob not the poor, because he is poor : neither oppress the afflicted in the gate : 
for the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them. 
—Prov. xxii. 22, 23. 



16 ANTI-SLAVERT BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

sages certainly include the case of slaves and their enslavers, so 
their moral teaching is, that God will punish with utter retributive 
destruction those who practise the sin of slavish oppression. 

A Virginia preacher of the Gospel* has said, " The fact that sla- 
very was Introduced among us, not by ourselves, but by our fore- 
fathers, is almost constantly brought forward as an excuse for our 
practice. Admitting that this may be some palliation, a moment's 
reflection might satisfy any one that we are not justified in living 
in a practice in itself wrong b}' the fact that our fathers acted so 
before us. The laws of civil society, the conduct of man with man, 
the history of God's dealings towards nations and individuals, as well 
as the express declarations of his Word, are all opposed to this plea 
of justification. How can you read your Bible and not see as a mat- 
ter of fact, that the sins of our fathers instead of justifying us in living 
in the same, will assuredly, unless we repent, be visited on us 1 It 
Is laid dov/n as a principle of God's providential government that he 
will visit the sins of the fathers on the children unto the third and 
fourth generation. This is explained in Ezek. xvlii. as especially 
applicable to those cases in which children continue in the same 
sins in which their fathers lived. The way, and the only way, to 
escape visitations for the sins of our fathers, is to forsake those sins, 
and as far as may be correct the evils they have done. Not only is 
this principle plainly taught in Scripture, but it is Illustrated by 
examples, and some on the very point in question. 

" The generation of the Egyptians that were visited with such 
heavy judgments for enslaving Israel, did not begin the work of en- 
slaving that people ; It was commenced long before. They found 
it in existence, received it from their fathers, and were probably 
the third or fourth generation that had practised it. They followed 
the footsteps of their fathers ; and while probably making this iden- 
tical excuse, the cloud of vengeance was gathering over them, 
which swep't over them as with the besom of destruction. 

" So it was with the Babylonians, and the nations that acted with 
them, in oppressing Israel, that ' held them fast and refused to let 
them go.' God visited on tl em their ow^n sins, and the sins of their 
fathers ; gave them up to spoil and slavery, and caused it to ' be re- 
compensed unto them according to their doings.' The practice of 

• Rev. J. D. Paxton, formerly Pastor of the Cumberland Congrecration, Virginia, in 
a book of 200 pages, entitled " 'Letters on Slavery," published by A. T. Skillman, Lex- 
ington, Ky., 1833. 



MAN-STEALING. 17 

slavery may have been going on about as long among us as it did in 
Egypt ; and while some are pleading in excuse that we did not 
begin it, they seem to forget that, according to God's word, we are 
the generation at which the Divine threatening begins to look hard. 
The very fact that it has gone on so long, is in proof that the cup 
of iniquity must be filling up, and the bitter waters almost ready to 
overflow." 

VIII. Abundant additional evidence of the same doctrine is found 
in the fact, that the holding, exchanging, bartering, buying, selling 
and otherwise trading in human beings as property, and the licen- 
tiousness and prodigality, tyranny and cruelty produced by those 
practices are represented as among the greatest sins and threatened 
with the severest Divine judgments and punishments, in various 
other parts of the Scriptures, see 'Deut. xxviii. 68; ^^2 Chron. 
xxviii. 8-15; ''Neh. v. 5-15 ; 'Ps. xliv. 12; ^Isa. lii. 3-6 ; « Jer. 

1 And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof 
I spake unto thee, Thou shall see it no more again : and there ye shall be sold unto 

your enemies for bond-men and bond-women, and no man shall buy you. Deut. 

xxviii. 68. 

■■2 And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred 
thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, 
and brought the spoil to Samaria. But a prophet of the Lord was there, whose name 
was Oded ; and he went out before the host that came to Samaria, and said imto 
them. Behold, because the Lord God of your fathers was wroth with Judah, he hath 
delivered them into your hand, and ye have slain them in a rage that reacheth up to 
heaven. And now ye purpose to keep under the children of Judah and Jerusalem for 
bond-men and bond-women unto you : but are there not with you, even ;ith you, sins 
against the Lord your God ? Now hear me therefore, and deliver the e::xptives again, 
which ye have taken captive of your brethren ; for the fierce wrath of the Lord is 
upon you. Then certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim, Azariah the son of 
Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth, and Jehizkiah the sw! of Shallum, and 
Amasa the son of Hadlai, stood up against them that came from the war, and said 
unto them. Ye shall not bring in the captives hither : for whereas we have offended 
against the Lord already, ye intend to add more to our sins and to our trespass : for 
our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel. So the armed men left 
the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the congregation. And the men 
which were expressed by name rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil 
clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave 
them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon 
asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm-trees, and to their brethren : then 
they returned to Samaria. — 2 Chron. xxviii. 8 — 15. 

3 Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children : 
and !o, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of 
our daughters are brought into bondage already : neither is it in our power to redeem 
them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. And I was very angry when I 
heard their cry and these words. Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the 
nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them. Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. 
And I set a great assembly against them. And I said unto them, We, after our 
ability, have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen ; 
and will ye even sell your brethren ? or shall they be sold unto us ? Then held they 
their peace, and found nothuig to answer. Also I said, It is not good^lhat ye do : 
ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heatheri 
our enemies? I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might exact of them 
money and corn : I pray you, let us leave off this usury. Restore, I pray you, to 
tbeiD, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their oUveyards, and their houses, 



18 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

XV. 13, 14; ^Eze. xxvii. 2, 13, 26— 36 ; « Joel iii. 3-8 ; "Amos li. 
6, 7 ; '" Oba. 11 ; " Nah. iii. 10 ; ^^ Zech. xi. 5, &c. According to 

also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye 
exact of them. Then said they. We will restore them, and will require nothing of 
them ; so will we do as thou sayest. Then I called the priests, and took an oath of 
them, that they shoidd do according to this promise. Also I shook my lap, and said. 
So God shake out every man from his house, and from his labor, that performeth not 
this promise, even thus be he shaken out, and emptied. And all the congregation 
said. Amen, and praise the Lord. And the people did according to this promise. 
— Neh. V. 5—15. 

■» Thou sellest thy people for naught, and dost not increase thy wealth by their 
price. — Ps. xliv. 12. 

5 For thus saith the Lord, Ye have sold yourselves for naught ; and ye shall bo re- 
deemed without money. For thus saith the Lord God, My people went down afore- 
time into Egypt to sojourn there ; and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. 
Now therefore, what have I here, saith the Lord, that my people is taken away for 
naught ? they that rule over them make them to howl, saith the Lord ; and my name 
continually every day is blasphemed. Therefore my people shall know my name ; 
therefore they shall know in that day that 1 am he that doth speak : behold, it is L 
— Isa. Iii. 3—6. 

u Thy substance and thy treasures will I give to the spoil without price, and that 
for all thy sins, even in all thy borders. And I will make thee to pass with thine ene- 
mies into a land which thou knowest not : for a fire is kindled in mine anger, which 
shall burn upon you. — Jer. xv. 13, 1-1. 

7 Now, thou son of man, take up a lamentation for Tyrus. Javan, Tubal, and 
Meshech, they were thy merchants : they traded the persons of men and vessels 
of brass in thy market. Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters : the east 
wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas. Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy mer- 
chandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy caulkers, and the occupiers of thy mer- 
chandise, and all thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is 
in the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin. The 
suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots. And' all that handle the 
oar, the mariners, and all the pilots of the sea, shall come down from their ships, 
they shall stand upon the land ; and shall cause their voice to be heard against thee, 
and shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up dust upon their heads, they shall wallow 
themselves in the ashes : and they shall make themselves utterly bald for thee, and 
gird them with sackcloth, and they shall weep for thee with bitterness of heart and 
bitter wailing. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and 
lament over thee, saying. What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of 
the sea? When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many people ; 
thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy 
merchandise. In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the 
waters, thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee shall fall. All the 
inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee, and their kings shall be sore 
afraid, they shall be troubled in their countenance. The merchants among the peo- 
ple shall hiss at thee ; thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more. — Eze. 
xxvii. 2, 13, 26—36. 

8 And they have cast lots for my people ; and have given a boy for a harlot, and 
sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. Yea, and what have ye to do with me, 
Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompense? 
amd if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will 1 return your recompense upon 
your oAvn head ; Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into 
your temples my goodly pleasant things. The children also of Judah and the chil- 
dren of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far 
from their border. Behold I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold 
them, and will return your recompense upon your own head : and I will sell your sons 
and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to 
the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it. — Joel iii. 3 — 8. 

9 Thus saith the Lord ; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not 
turn away the punishment thereof: because they sold the righteous for silver, and the 
poor for a p^r of shoes ; that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, 
and turn aside the way of the meek ; and a man and his father will go in unto the 
same maid, to profane my holy name. — Amos ii. 6, 7. 

10 In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers car- 
ried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon 
JerusaleiQt even thou wast as cue of them. — Oba. 11. 



MAN-STEALING. 19 

the letter and spirit of these passages, such treatment of human 
beings is deserving of death, though in some of them the same 
treatment is threatened as the punishment of the greatest sins, which 
amounts to the same thing, because human slavery is the living 
death and destruction of its victims — while in most of the same 
passages public destruction or national death is threatened, as the 
Divine retaliatory punishment for the public or customary practice 
of the same treatment, as their context clearly shows. Divine re- 
taliatory punishment threatened in the Scriptures is generally of a 
similar kind to the national or public sins threatened. 

IX. I lastly argue that the practice of human slavery is the iden- 
tical crime of " man-stealing," from the nature of the practice itself, 
or the light in which the law of nature places it, as the highest spe- 
cies of larceny or theft that can be committed. Larceny, or steal- 
ing, in its most comprehensive sense, is the taking and withholding 
from one human being by another, of anything that justly belongs 
to the former, and to which and to its use the stealer or thief knows 
he has no just or moral right ; the scriptural descriptions of crimes 
being far more comprehensive than our common law definitions of 
them, so as to correspond with the law of Nature in its requirements. 
By the will and gift of God every human being is, under God, the 
sole and exclusive owner of himself, and of all his own just rights, 
faculties and acquisitions. All these the slaveholder takes from his 
slaves, without any leave or licence from them, and without any 
compensation or equivalent, for his own exclusive use and benefit, 
just as the common thief steals common goods and chattels for his 
own exclusive use ; both of these kinds of thieves well knowing they 
have no moral or just right to the property stolen, as each would 
instantly see and acknowledge, were the crime practised upon him- 
self. The slaveholder never pretends to take these things from 
third persons who are themselves left free, as the common thief 
does, and it is certain they are taken from the slaves without their 
leave. It is therefore larceny or stealing in fact, originating in the 
sin of covetousness, the same being the highest and most violent 
breach of the eighth and tenth commands of the decalogue, because 

u Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity : her young children also were 
dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets : and they cast lots for her honora- 
ble men, and all her great men were bound in chains. — Nah. iii. 10. 

12 Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty ; and they that sell 
them say, Blessed be the Lord ; for I am rich : and their own shepherds pity them 
not. — Zech. xi, 6. 



20 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

the articles stolen are the most precious and valuable that men pos- 
sess in this world, as uniform and universal experience testifies. 
None of the scriptural accounts of the crime of man-stealing describe 
it as the stealing of one person from another whose lawful property 
he was, but each of them, so far as it goes, describes it and its effects 
as the involuntary and forcible reduction of human beings to the 
condition of property, like other goods and chattels, and the use 
and treatment of them in that condition by means of criminal vio- 
lence and fraud, exactly as slaves are now reduced to the same con- 
dition and subjected to the same use and treatment by the same 
criminal means. A careful examination and comparison of the nu- 
merous passages here quoted, will establish these facts clearly. 

From the copious premises here quoted it is past all reasonable 
and honest doubt or controversy that human slavery is the same 
identical practice as the great crime of man-stealing, &c., so severely 
denounced and condemned in the Scriptures, that every slave- 
trader, purchaser, seller, slaveholder, and all persons engaged 
in the support of such slavery, such as slave overseers, and drivers, 
and persons engaged in the pursuit and capture of fugitive slaves, as 
well as those who legislate and otherwise act in favor of slavery, are 
deserving of the punishment of sure death by the Levitical or moral 
law, and that the communities and nations Avho tolerate and sanction 
the practice by law or custom, are obnoxious to the terrible retri- 
bution threatened as the punishment due to this great crime in the 
Scriptures. 

Much quibbling is resorted to by the advocates of slavery on the 
subject of this alleged identity, on account of the pretended indefi- 
niteness and obscurity with which the crime of " man-stealing," &c., 
is described in the Scriptures. But as I have already remarked, the 
scriptural descriptions are all more comprehensive than most human 
definitions are, so as to allow no chance for the guilty to escape. 
But it is necessary for me also to observe, that the scriptural descrip- 
tions of man-stealing, &c., are as plain as those of any other crime 
condemned in the Levitical law, and the identity of that crime with 
the practice of human slavery is as clearly exhibited in the Scrip- 
tures as the identity of murder, or any other crime condemned by 
that law, is with the crimes now supposed to be the same — so that 
if man-stealing, &c., be not the practice of slavery, so neither is the 
murder, mayhem, robbery, &c., described and condemned in the 
Scriptures, the same crimes which they are so currently supposed 



PERVERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 21 

to represent in modern times. To those possessing " an honest and 
a good heart" (Luke xviii. 15), uncontaminated by the influence 
of slavery, no identity will naturally appear plainer, than that of 
man-stealing and human slavery, the reason why no such difficulty 
is experienced in identifying other crimes with those condemned in 
the Scriptures being, that the moral vision of most men is not ob- 
scured by their influence. But we should rememiber that this is a 
fearful subject wilfully to misunderstand or misinterpret, because 
the Scriptures assure us that if men do not become better they cer 
tainly grow worse by the exhibition of the true Gospel. 2 Cor. ii 
15, 16 ; iv. 3, 4, &c. 

I ought again to remark, in conclusion, that the customary cruel- 
ties, &.C., which invariably attend the practice of human slavery, as 
absolutely necessary to its support and perpetuity, and therefore 
necessary incidents of the practice, are yet nowhere directly rep- 
resented in the Scriptures as any part of the practice itself, which is 
both directly and indirectly described in the Scriptures as the con- 
version of human beings into property and nothing more. 



CHAPTER III. 

PERVERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

Though plainly and severely as the practice of human slavery is 
thus condemned in the Scriptures, yet its advocates contend that 
the same practice is morally justified by them, thus making the 
word of God contradict ^tself, by first justifying and then condemn- 
ing the same practice, at the same time and in the same code of 
laws ! ! But I have constantly observed that these advocates never 
attempt to point out and explain the specific distinction between 
these two cases, such for instance as those described in Ex. xxi. 2 
and 16 ; the first of which is morally approved and justified because 
regulated by statute, while the other is morally condemned as one 
of the greatest crimes under the penalty of sure death. Nor do they 
ever attempt to settle the specific distinction between the acts 
described in Lev. xxv. 39, 47, and Deut. xxiv. 7, which are treated 
ia the same manner in the Scriptures. They never tell us wherein 
3 



22 



ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 



the case recorded in Gen. xxvii. 12, 13, 23, 27, buying the ser- 
vices of men for a limited period, differs from that recorded in 
Gen. xxxvii. 27, 36, xlii. 21, 22, where Joseph was said 
to be sold or stolen ; though it is equally plain that the lirst 
was approved, and the last condemned by God himself. They 
never attempt to reconcile these passages as describing the same 
subject, nor to point out the specific difference in their subjects, 
probably on account of the utter confusion in which the attempt 
would involve them. They never, in fact, mention the last quota- 
tions if they can avoid it, but content themselves with naked asser- 
tions that tiie first passages here quoted describe and justify the prac- 
tice of human slavery. It becomes proper, therefore, to show at 
some length, that this doctrine of theirs is founded and sustained 
entirely on perversions of certain passages of the Scriptures, forged 
by falsifications of their true meaning and intent. Perversions of 
the Scriptures are a turning (perverto) of their true to a false mean- 
ing, and are denounced all over the Scriptures as among the greatest 
sins that men cau commit, as indeed they necessarily must be, be- 
cause they are attempts to make the Almighty say what He has not 
said, and to mean what He did not mean, to the destruction of hu- 
man duty, rights, and happiness. Abolitionists have sometimes been 
severely censured for the moral severity with which they have con- 
demned the pro-slavery perversions of the Scriptures, but let those 
who may feel disposed to repeat this censure read the following 
passages ; Ps. cxix. 126 ; Isa. v. j 20 ; Jer. xviii. 15, xxiii. 36 ; 
Eze. V. 6, 8, xiii. 9-16, xxii. 26, 28, xxxiv. 18, 19 ; Mic. iii. 9 ; 
Hab. i. 4; Zep.' iii. 4 5 Mai. ii. 7, 8; Matt. xv. 3,6,9, • Mark 
vii. 8 ; Acts xii. 10, xv. 1, 24 ; 2 Cor. ii. 17 ; Gal. i. T; 
Col. ii. 8 ; 1 Pet. i. IS ; 2 Pet. ii. 1 ; iii. 16 ; Eev. xxii. 18, 
19, and numerous other similar passages. 

It is proper here to add for the sake of perspicuity, that all the 
doctrines of the Scriptures are properly divisible into two kinds, 
namely : first, those which are matters of faith or belief only, and 
secondly, those that are matters of faith and practice both ; the for- 
mer being so indistinctly and obscurely revealed, that we may 
without any perversion or sin, honestly and innocently differ in 
opinion as to their true meaning, because we never can attain to 
absolute certainty with respect to many of their particulars ; while 
the latter are so distinctly and clearly revealed, as the rules of 
our practice or practical duty, that there can be no honest or inno- 



CASE OF CAIN. 23 

cent difference of opinion respecting them. Of the former kind are 
the doctrines of the Creation, the fall of man, the Nature of Christ, 
the nature of Inspiration, the nature of the future state, &c. ; while 
of the latter kind are the rules of the Decalogue, the New Birth, 
the Law of Love, the Golden Rule, and all other practical precepts 
of the Scriptures. The same distinction is made among the rules 
composing the great Law of Nature, though it is less obvious than 
the former. It is everywhere contended by the friends of the 
slave, that the Bible doctrines in relation to human slavery and its 
abolition belong entirely to the latter class, being so plainly and 
perspicuously revealed in the Scriptures, as to admit of no honest 
difference of opinion respecting them. They assert that any essential 
difference from their own opinions on those plain subjects, are evi- 
dence of rather a perverted heart in their adversaries, than of the 
incorrectness of those opinions. It is hoped that the following pages 
will clearly exhibit the truth of this assertion. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CASE OF CAIN. 

The absurd pro-slavery j pretence that the ipeople of Africa de- 
scended from Cain, and are included in the curse pronounced upon 
that murderer, would not be worth noticing were there not some 
few persons in the world, apparently weak, and stupid, and perverted 
enough, seriously to imagine its truth, as there is hardly anything 
in the world too absurd to be without some believers. That these 
people descended from Adam is certain. But as we find from Gen. 
vii. 23, ix. 18, 19, and other passages, that they must have descended 
from Noah as well as from Adam, to settle the merits of this pre- 
tence we have only to ascertain whether Noah descended from Cain 
or not. From Gen. v. 3-32, we learn that Noah descended from 
Seth, another son of Adam, and a brother of Cain, a circumstance 
which renders it impossible for the latter to have had any descend- 
ants since the general deluge, or Noah's flood. 

1 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, 
both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of heaven ; and they were 
destroyed from the earth ; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with 
him in the ark. And the sons of Noah that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and 
Ham, and Japheth ; and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of 
Noah : and of them was the whole earth overspread. — Gen. vii. 23 ; ix. 18, 19. 



24 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT, 

As to the mark recorded in Gen. iv. 15, as having been put 
upon Cain, though some white people pretend it was the black 
color, the negroes retort that it was the white color, a controversy 
with which I feel no disposition to interfere. 



CHAPTER V. 

CASE OF CANAAN.* 

Great numbers of pro-slavery people contend that the negroet; 
have descended from Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, who was 
cursed for his father's transgression, ^ Gen. ix. 25-27, and that this 
curse was inflicted upon that race as his posterity. That this pre- 
tence is false in fact I proceed next to show. As to Canaan himself, 
no part of the curse was ever inflicted upon him personall}^, so far 
as we know ; for we have not only no account of any such inflic- 
tion, but we learn from ^ Gen. x. 15-20, that he was the ancestor 
of whole tribes or nations of people apparently as free as others. 
The curse really was, however, afterwards inflicted on his pos- 
terity. To understand correctly when, and where, and how this 
was done, it is necessary to premise, that according to Gen. ix. 
26, Canaan was to become subject to Shem — and that according 
to Gen. xi. 10-26, Abraham, the ancestor of the Ishmaelitish 
nation, descended from the latter — so that according to the true 
meaning of this prophetic curse, Canaan's posterity were to be- 
come subject to those of Shem — the Jews. According to Gen. 
X. 15, 19, xiii. 12, xv. 18, 21, xvii. 8, and other passages, the pos- 
terity of Canaan settled in that part of Asia then called the " Land 
of Canaan," the boundaries of which are well described and de- 

* See Letter No. iv. of a series published by " A Disciplej" in the " Cincinnati 
Weekly Herald and Philanthropist," January, 1S45. 

1 And he said, Cursed be Canaan ; a seiTant of servants shall he be unto his 
brethren. And he said, blessed be the Lord God of Shem ; and Canaan shall be 
his scivant. God shall enlarge Japhcth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; 
and Canaan shall be his servant. — Gen. ix. 2.5 — 27. 

2 And Canaan begat Sidon his first-bom, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the 
Amorile, and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite : and the Sinite, and the 
Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families 
of the Canaanites spread abroad. And the border of the Canaanites was from 
Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, imto Gaza ; as thou goest unto Sodom and Gomor- 
rah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha. These are the sons of Ham, after 
tneir families, after their tongues, in thfir countries, and iiv their nations. — Gen. x, 

6—20. 



CASE OF CANAAN, 25 

fined in the foregoing passages, from which we also learn, that God 
gave the same territory to Abraham and his posterity. But we 
have no account in the Scriptures, or in any other history, that 
any of the posterity of Canaan ever settled in Africa, nor have we 
any other evidence that any portion of the inhabitants of that 
continent could have descended from them, but the contrary, as 
will soon appear. We also learn from Num. xxiv. 2, 12, Josh, 
xii. 7, 8, and numerous other passages in the Pentateuch and the 
succeeding books, that this grant was actually fulfilled and carried 
into effect in the conquest of the "Land of Canaan" by the Jews, 
so that the curse pronounced upon Canaan was thus actually ful- 
filled, by his posterity the Canaanites thus becoming subject to 
those of Shem. No fulfilment of prophecy was ever plainer 
than this. 

In Deut. XX. 10, 18, and other passages, the very mode of this 
fulfilment is described. Where the proof of the fulfilment of a 
prophecy is so very complete and satisfactory, it is useless to go 
into a long detail of ether facts and circumstances still further to 
expose the falsity of the pretence under consideration. As the 
posterity of Canaan settled in Asia and not in Africa, there is not 
only no probability that the Africans descended from them, but 
the modern Syrians who did descend from them actually reside in 
Asia now, and are not negroes. The pretence is indeed sur- 
rounded with numerous other critical difficulties, such as that 
prophecies are not rules of moral duty or dispensations to commit 
sin, as numerous cases in the Scriptures prove, since the guilty 
agents of their fulfilment are there recorded as having been as 
surely punished as other sinners. See Matt, xviii. 7, xxvi. 24i j 
Acts i. 16, 20 ; John xvii. 12 ; Rom. ix. 17, &c. That proba- 
bly more of the posterity of Shem and Japhet, such as the an- 
cient Greeks, and Romans, and modern English, Russians, Circas- 
sians, &c., have been enslaved or reduced to the condition of 
property than those of Ham have. But I forbear the critical ex- 
hibition of these numerous difficulties, because they have been 
sufficiently illustrated and explained by other writers, and because 
it is sufficient that I have proven the falsity of the pretence in 
point of fact. I ought to remark in conclusion, however, that the 
aboriginal inhabitants of Africa, and their present posterity, are 
supposed by the most approved antiquarians to have descended 
from Cash, Mizraim and Phut, the other three sons of Ham, 



26 



ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 



upon whom no curse was pronounced. By these antiquarians 
Cush is supposed to have been the ancestor of the Ethiopian or 
negro portion, and Phut of the Carthaginian or Moorish portion, 
of the ancient and modern inhabitants of Africa. But be these 
conjectures as they may, it is certain that since the African pos- 
terity of these patriarchs have never yet been conquered and sub- 
jected in their own country, either by the descendants of Shem or 
by any others, if the curse pronounced upon Canaan was intended 
to attach to them or to their posterity, it remains thus far yet to 
be fulfilled. If, as some contend, the condition of enslavement be 
indicative of descent from Canaan, the rule will render a large 
portion of the present English and Americans such descendants, 
for it is only a few years since a multitude of their British ances- 
tors were absolute slaves under the name of " villeins" — also the 
same rule will render most of the present Russians, Poles, Geor- 
gians, Circassians, Turks, &c., lineal descendants of Canaan and 
Ham. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RULES OF CONSTRirCTION. 

As in the investigation which is to follow, it will be necessary,, 
in order to avoid perversion and ascertain the truth, to put differ- 
ent constructions on certain words and phrases, such as the subject 
matter and the context Vill clearly direct and require, it is proper 
here to specify certain rules of critical construction, which have 
been long since approved and universally adopted by critical 
commentators. 

I. That the letter of a statute or other law be so construed, 
whenever it has different meanings in different uses and connec- 
tions, as to harmonize with the spirit or general and collective 
meaning of the whole connection to which it belongs. 

II. Where a double or different construction of the letter is 
admissible, that shall always be preferred which is most consistent 
with natural liberty, justice and righteousness, provided the gene- 
ral spirit of the law permit such construction. 



USES OF THE WORDS " BUy" AND " SELL." 27 

III. All parts of every code or collection of laws or system of 
ethics are to be thus harmonized by construction, unless the ex- 
press letter as well as the general spirit of the same prevent such 
harmony by such construction, in which case alone we are to allow 
that there is a conflict of laws in such code or collection. It is to 
be presumed that no fault will be found with these just and equi- 
table rules, nor with their just and equitable application to the 
present important subject matter now under consideration. 



CHAPTER VII. 

"USES OF THE WORDS " BUy" AND " SELL." 

Multitudes of pro-slavery advocates contend, that because the 
words "buy" and "sell" are used in describing some of the cus- 
tomary legal Hebrew servitudes, the latter must necessarily have 
been slavish, and such seems to be the general belief or impression 
even among preachers of the gospel and professors of religion. 
But this proposition must as a certain and infallible rule necessa- 
rily be false, because the same words are oftener used in the Scrip- 
tures to describe free and voluntary service, than they are to de- 
scribe slavish service or slavery. Thus, in such passages as Gen. 
xxxvii. 27, 28, 36 5 Ex. xxi. 16 ; Deut. xxiv. 7, &c., they are 
undoubtedly used to describe the condition of slavery, while in 
Gen. xlvii. 19-23 ; 1 Kings xxi. 20, 25 ; 2 Kings xvii. 17 ; 
Isa. 1. 1, lii. 35 Acts xx. 28; Rom. vii. 14; 1 Cor. vi. 20, 
vii. 23 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, &c., the same words are just as certainly 
used to describe free and voluntary service, astheir context clearly 
proves, and as is universally admitted among Bible commentators 
and critics. So sensible are the advocates of slavery of ^the truth 
of these propositions, that they never dare to compare such cases 
as those contained in Gen. xxxvii. and xlvii., in Ex. xxi. 2-16, 
and Deut. xv. 12, and xxiv. 7 ; because if they admit a difference 
between them, that difference can only be the same as between 
free service and slavery, which contradicts and ruins the whole 
theory of Bible slavery; while if they assert the identity of the 
practices described, the ready inquiry instantly occurs, why did 
God, who never does anything in vain, regulate and thereby ap- 



28 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

prove and sanction a practice in the passages first quoted, but con- 
demn it in those last quoted under the penalty of death % This 
inquiry is so distressing to the advocates of slavery that they al- 
ways avoid it if possible by neglecting and refusing to notice such 
passages as Gen. xxxvii. 27, 28, 36 ; Ex. xxi. 16 ; Deut. xxiv. 
7 ; 1 Tim. i. 9, 10, and other passages which describe and con- 
demn such slavery as one of the greatest crimes or violations of 
the moral law ; but simply content themselves with obstinately 
asserting, that the passages describing the Patriarchal and Hebrew 
servitudes where these words " buy" and " sell" are used, describe 
slavery and nothing else. 

But from the foregoing clear premises we discover, that from 
the mere scriptural use of these words alone in describing the con- 
dition of servitude or service, nothing can certainly be determined 
respecting its real nature, which, as in every similar case of criti- 
cal doubt and construction, is to be ascertained, determined, and 
understood, by the subject matter, by the context, and by the 
general description or spirit of each passage, all taken in connec- 
tion with Ihe letter or language thereof. Such, when we are 
honest, is always our customary mode of examination or reason- 
ing. Thus no person supposes from the description given in 
1 Kings xxi. 20, 25, that Ahab was a slave or article of personal pro- 
perty, because we see from the context of his life, actions, and 
character recorded in the same and other books, that he was a king 
and absolute monarch. So no person supposes from the descrip- 
tion in such passages as Acts xx. 28 ; Eom. vii. 14 ; 1 Cor, 
vi. 20, vii. 23 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, that Paul and his converts were 
property or slaves, because the context describes them as free and 
voluntary servants of Christ. In a similar manner, though slave- 
holders customarily call their slaves their "servants," yet we' 
know them to be slaves from the circumstances in which the word 
is used. On the contrary, in England and other free countries^ 
we know the persons customarily called " servants" are not pro- 
perty or slaves, from the circumstances attending the customary 
use of the same word. It will no doubt be said in reply to these 
observations, that these words are employed in the passages here 
quoted in a typical or figurative sense merely, and do not in that 
sense mean slavish service or slavery. This pkopositiok is true. 
In the passages under consideration these words are used in a 
typical or figurative sense, as descriptive of free and voluntary 



USES OF THE WORDS " BUy" AND " SELL." 29 

service only. But the important inquiry immediately arises, 
where are the types or figures from which these free descriptions 
are copied to be found 1 For it should be specially noticed and 
remembered, that these types must have existed before the de- 
scriptions did, and been free also, because a free description can 
no more be taken from a slave type, than a slavish description can 
from a free type — every typical description in the Scriptures cor- 
responds in its nature with its type. I ansAver, that the types or 
fiffures here sought after are these same Patriarchal and Hebrew 
servitudes, the nature of which is so much controverted, because 
all the types referred to in the New Testament are contained in 
the Levitical law and the lives of the Patriarchs, and nowhere 
else, and no other types suited to these descriptions except servi- 
tudes are to be found in either. But as these descriptions are all 
free, so these typical servitudes from which they are copied must 
have been free also. According to the descriptive testimony of 
the New Testament, therefore, all those servitudes were free and 
voluntary, and both Testaments thus far completely harmonized. 
Nothing in this plain and decisive testimony ought to surprise 
us as strange or uncommon, because we ourselves, in common 
with the people of most other modern nations, customarily and 
familiarly use the same words " buy" and " sell" to describe free 
and voluntary service. Thus, we customarily say with respect 
to town or parish paupers, that they are " to be sold." We al- 
ways customarily mean thereby, that their support and mainte- 
nance are to be sold to the lowest bidder. So we say figuratively 
from custom respecting poor foreign immigrants, that they are 
" sold," or that they " sell themselves" to pay for their passages. 
We always customarily and really mean by these expressions 
that they agree beforehand to let themselves out to labor after 
their arrival, inpayment of the money advanced by their employ- 
ers to pay for their passage ; it being especially to be noticed in 
this connection and remembered by the reader, that the immi- 
grants in this case receiv^ the pay for the labor before the same 
is to be performed. Witl\ a similar meaning we customaril}'- say 
of venal politicians, tha\ they "sell themselves," and are 
" bought" or " purchased" '^y their employers or patrons — nobody 
being in the least deceived in any of these cases by. the use of this 
phraseology, into a false beief that slavish service was intended 
by it, or that the kinds of seRice described were not entirely free 



30 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

and voluntary. So where people are deceived and their inte- 
rests betrayed by their representatives or public confidential agents, 
the same kind of phraseology is sometimes employed the more 
forcibly to express the baseness of the supposed treachery, or the 
greatness of the injury sustained. The histories of the revolution 
tell us that Benedict Arnold was " bought" by British gold, and 
that Williams, Paulding and Van Wart could not be bought by 
Major Andre. When a northern clergyman marries a rich south- 
ern widow, country gossip thus hits off the indecency : " The 
cotton bags bought him." Sir Robert Walpole said, " every man 
has his price, and whoever will pay it, can buy him," and John 
Randolph said, " The Northern delegation is in the market ; give 
me money enough and I can buy them." The temperance publi- 
cations tell us that candidates for office buy men with whiskey. 
The same, or corresponding words and phrases, are employed for 
various purposes in other parts of the Scriptures, but generally to 
describe certain other free and voluntary customs of the ancient 
oriental nations. See Gen. xxix. 15-29, xxxiv. 11, 12; Ex. 
XX. 7, 11, xxii. 17, xxxiv. 20; Lev. xxvii. 2 — 8; Numb. 
xviii. 15, 16 ; Deut. xxii. 28, 29 ; Judg. i. 12, 13, ii. 14, iii. 
8, iv. 2 ; Ruth iv. 10 ; 1 Sam. xviii. 25, 27 ; Hosea iii. 2, 
&c. I shall hereafter have occasion to remark upon the nature of 
the ancient Hebrew free custom, of buying and "selling" Hebrew 
wives, wards, and children. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TRUE ISSUE, 

From the premises already stated it cleirly appears that two en- 
tirely DIFFERENT MODES OR WAYS of bujing and selling people, the 
one free and voluntary, and the other skvish, are plainly described 
in the Scriptures as having been in customary use among the an- 
cients, just as they now are among themoderns. The real contro- 
versy between the Bible advocates of slavery and their opponents 
then is as follows, namely : Were the ancient Patriarchal and He- 
brew servitudes in controversy, slavisi or otherwise ? Were Abra- 
ham's servants, said to have been "aought with his money," free 



KEY TO THE INQUIRY. 31 

servants or slaves ? Were the Levitical servants who were said to 
" sell themselves," and to be bought by their masters, and to be 
" their money," free and voluntary servants, or were they slaves 
and property ? These important inquiries form the only material 
issue now in controversy, and since it has been shown that the mere 
scriptural employment and use of the foregoing words and phrases 
proves nothing definite and certain in relation to it, and does nothing 
towards settling the merits of the controversy, the same must be 
decided and determined as in other similar cases, by the subject 
matter of the narrative, by the context, and by the whole general 
description of the actual condition of those servants, all taken in 
connection with those words and phrases. Several other subordi- 
nate controverted matters will arise for consideration in our pro- 
gress, such as. Whether the Levitical law justified any form or de- 
gree of human oppression ? Whether the Holy Prophets did the 
same ? Whether Christ and his Apostles connived at and sanc- 
tioned heathen Greek and Roman slavery ? &c. But the principal 
true material issue attending the whole controversy is that above 
stated. 



CHAPTER IX. 

KEY TO THE INQUIRY. 

Preparatory to the further investigation of this important sub- 
ject, it is proper for the reader to understand and become skilled 
in the use of what I call the Key to the Inquiry, which said 
"Key" consists in the critical examination and comparison of 
several passages in the Scriptures, in which the foregoing words 
and phrases are used to describe two different kinds of human 
service, a few specimens of which are as follows. The first spe- 
cimen is the comparison of Gen. xvii. 12, 13, 23, 27, with Acts 
XX. 28 ; 1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23. In each of these cases the ser- 
vants are said to have been " bought," or " purchased" (and of 
course were "sold") — in the first case " with money," and in the 
other " with blood," and "with a price." By any rule of critical 
reasoning or construction whatever, if the mere use of those words 
and phrases alone is to decide that Abraham and the other Patri- 



32 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

archs were slaveholders, then the same use decides that Christ and 
his Apostles were slaveholders also, owning and treating their own 
converts as property or slaves, and possessing the equal character 
and qualities of slaveholders both ancient and modern, as much as 
Abraham and the other Patriarchs can be supposed to have done. 
Thus if it be argued that property is commonly " bought" with 
property, and that "money" is property, so also is "blood" and 
" a price," property in common estimation, as much so as money 
is. But the supposition or notion of our Saviour and his Apostles 
being slaveholders, and their converts being their slaves, is too 
absurd and wicked for intelligent belief. This specimen is there- 
fore a comparison of free service with free service, which is so 
much plainer as the one kind was the type of the other. 

The second specimen is the critical comparison of the case re- 
corded in Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36, with that recorded in Gen. xlvii. 
19, 26, as follows : 

From the human sale recorded in Gen. xxxvii., we learn the 
following particulars. 

1st. That the person sold (Joseph) was thus treated without his 
consent and against his will, 

2d. That he was no party to the bargain or contract by which 
he was sold, any more than a beast or other article of property is. 

3d. That he received no part of the price, consideration or com- 
pensation (twenty pieces of silver), for which he was sold, any 
more than a beast or other article of property does. 

4th. That the effect of the sale was to convert him into an arti- 
cle of property, as suitable for subsequent traffic and merchandise 
in, as beasts and other kinds of property are. 

5th. That according to Gen. xlii. 21, 22, this transaction is 
represented to have been so great a crime or sin, as to be deserv- 
ing of death by the laws of nature. 

From the human sale recorded in Gen. xlvii., we learn, 

1st. That the persons sold (the Egyptians) were thus treated at 
their own earnest request. 

2d. That they " sold themselves,^' and alone made the whole 
contract with the purchaser. 

3d. That they themselves received the whole of the price, con- 
sideration or compensation (support during the years of famine) 
given on the contract for their sale. 

4th. That the eifect of the whole transaction was to render 



KEY TO THE INQUIKT. 33 

them tenants at a very reasonable rent, but otherwise to leave 
them just as free in all other respects as they were before. 

5th. That according to the Scripture account of it, the whole 
transaction was perfectly moral and virtuous in its own nature, 
and just as free and equal as common leasing and hiring now are. 

Here then are two scriptural accounts in the same book, of 
two different purchases and sales of human beings, both entirely 
opposite to each other in their moral and political nature, effects 
and consequences. In the first case, the word " sold" is used, 
and " bought" understood, because there cannot be a sale without 
a purchase. While in the second, the word "bought" is used, 
and "sold" understood, because there cannot be a purchase with- 
out a "sale." This specimen then is a comparison of a slave sale, 
with a voluntary sale of free service. The critical reader will 
also remark that in the latter case quoted from Gen. xhii., the 
Egyptians who " sold themselves" received their pay before their 
services were to commence or be rendered, just as poor foreigners 
said to be "sold to pay their passage" receive it now ; whereas 
the " hired servants" mentioned in the Levitical law did not re- 
ceive their pay until after their work was performed, as most hire- 
lings now do, which is the only material distinction made in the 
Scriptures between bought and hired servants, both kinds being 
in all other respects equally free, voluntary and privileged. We 
make the same necessary inference respecting the payment of the 
ancient " bought" Hebrew servants, from the descriptions con- 
tained in such passages as Lev. xxvi. 49 ; Neh. v. 5, &c. We also 
infer that these bought servants might freely hold property of 
their own, a right wholly incompatible with the condition of 
slavery. From Lev. xxv. 47 ; Neh. v. 8, &c., we also learn that 
this free custom of purchasing servants of themselves in payment of 
previous debts contracted by them, was general throughout the 
ancient oriental countries. 

The last specimen I shall offer is the critical comparison of Ex. 
x:xi. 16, and Deut. xxiv. 7, with 1 Kings xxi. 20, 25 ; 2 Kings 
xvii. 17; Isa. 1. 1, lii. 3 ; Rom. vii. 14 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1—3, &c., by 
which, from the light furnished by the comparison just made, 
similar inferences will be easily and readily drawn ', the same 
being also a comparison of slave kidnapping, and slave selling and 
holding, with free and voluntary service figuratively described. 
From the descriptions in the passages quoted it is certain, that 



34 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

neither King Ahab, nor the Jews, nor the Apostles Paul and Peter, 
and their converts therein mentioned, could have been property 
or slaves, in any respect or sense whatever. See John vlii. 33 ; 
Gal. iv. 1. It is proper for the sake of perspicuity again to 
repeat the remark that the only important scriptural distinction 
made between bought and sold servants, and hired servants, is as 
follows : namely, when their wages or pay were advanced to them 
beforehand, they were said to " sell themselves" and to be 
"bought" by their creditors or employers to repay the same, as 
the examples already quoted clearly prove. But where the wa- 
ges or pay were not to be received till the labor was performed, 
the Hebrew servants were said to be " hired," as we see in Deut. 
xxiv. 15, and lany similar passages. 

But excepting this one mere nominal distinction, and that of | 
the heritable disability of foreign servants, to be noticed hereafter, 
not another can be found in the Scriptures, in the equal rights and 
privileges of these two classes, of Hebrew and other ancient ori- 
ental servants. 



CHAPTER X. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Examination of Gen. xii. 5 ; xvii. 12, 13, 23, 27 ; xx. 14 ; xxiv. 35. 

From the strong light furnished by the copious premises already 
stated, the remainder of our task will be comparatively easy. 
The Hebrew word Quanah so frequently rendered " buy" in the 
common English translation of the Old Testament, is literally 
rendered " gotten" in Gen. xii. 5, as it should be in some other 
passages where it is rendered "buy." The word literally means 
to get, gain, acquire, procure, obtain, possess; but it is more fre- 
quently used in the Scriptures than the word Kaurau, which 
literally means to buy or purchase. From the phrase " souls that 
they had gotten," which occurs in this passage, the advocates of 
slavery infer that Abraham's servants were slaves. But I agree 
in opinion with Mr. Dickey, that these " souls" were the converts 
which Abraham had made to the true religion — especially as this 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 35 

construction harmonizes with Abraham's history and character — 
and with the spirit of the Scriptures. From the expression used 
in Gen. xvii. 12, 13, 23, 27, the same pro-slavery inference is 
customarily drawn. But as we have seen that the scriptural use 
of these words and phrases does not necessarily describe the con- 
dition of slavery, we are obliged to resort to the context to dis- 
cover the real condition of Abraham's servants. The amount of 
the evidence thus furnished is small, and entirely circumstantial, 
but that little is very strong. From these same verses it appears 
that the same religious rights and privileges were secured to Abra- 
ham's servants, that belonged to him and his own children ; a 
strong analogical proof that they shared all other rights, because 
real slaves have no rights whatever, and it is not likely that these 
servants would be allowed some rights equally with children, but 
be denied all others. 

From Gen. xx. 7^ we learn that Abraham was a prophet. From 
Gen. xii. 7, 8, xiii. 4, and other passages, that he was a priest — 
and from Gen. xxiii. 6, that he was a " mighty prince," or king 
— he being in each of these three offices the type of Christ, — 
From Gen. xiii. 2, xxiv. 35, and other passages, that he was 
very wealthy and powerful. From such passages as Gen. xiv. 
22, 23, xviii. 18, 19, &c., we learn, that he was equally remark- 
able for natural honesty, justice, equity and righteousness. 

It also appears from Gen. xii. 1 — 37, XV. 1 — 18, xvii. 1 — 22, 
xviii. 1, 13, 17, &c., that he had frequent visions from God, that 
the greatest Divine promises were made to him and his posterity, 
and that he enjoyed more of the Divine favor than any other per- 
son of his time. What probability is there that such a character 
as this would have been guilty of a practice afterwards condemned 
in the Scriptures under the penalty of death, both by the laws of 
Nature and Revelation 1 Not the slightest whatever. Were it 
not for the wickedness involved in it, nothing can be conceived 
mor^ ludicrously amusing, than the notion of Father Abraham 
buying and selling slaves, feeding them on a peck of corn a week, 
selling fathers from their children, husbands from their wives, o'r 
exhibiting conduct in any other respect resembling that of our 
modern professed Christian slaveholders. It would be just as 
absurd and unreasonable to suppose that Christ and his Apostles 
were guilty of such conduct, as that Abraham was, the wicked- 
ness being no greater in the one case than in the other. What is 



36 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

there recorded in the lives and characters of the other patriarchs, 
that could induce us to suspect that they might have been slave- 
holders 1 

From the information given in Gen. vi. 5 — 13, it is highly pro- 
bable that the antediluvians were destroyed for the crime of slav- 
ish violence among other sins. But there is no probability that 
Noah, who with his family alone were saved on account of his 
justice and righteousness (see Gen. vi. 8, 9, vii. 1, &c.), would 
afterwards have been guilty of the same sinful practice that de- 
stroyed the rest. Nor is there any probability that such righteous 
persons as Isaac, and Jacob, and the other patriarchs are described 
to have been, would have been customarily guilty of a practice so 
utterly repugnant to the Law of Nature as human slavery is. As 
that practice is described in the Scriptures, Gen. xlii. 21, 22, as 
being utterly condemned by that great law, there cannot be the 
slightest reason to suppose that any of the patriarchs adopted it — 
for God certainly would never have selected'as the chosen depo- 
sitories of the true religion, persons who were in the habit of violat- 
ing it without scruple or remorse, especially in acts that were 
afterwards condemned by express revelation to be punished with 
death ; for slavery is as great and as plain a crime against natural 
as revealed religion, as the last argument, or subjection to the 
condition of slavery, will immediately convince the most invete- 
rate friend of human slavery. It should be remembered, however, 
that as the patriarchs lived under the dim and uncertain light of 
the Law of Nature, they like Joseph's brethren occasionally fell 
into great errors and sins, of which from the bad consequences 
they had frequent occasions for repentance, whether they im- 
proved them or not — so that even if under this dim light they 
had committed the sin of slavish oppression, their conduct in that 
respect would have been no more moral example or justification 
of our ov/n, than that of Joseph's brethren in selling him was. 

A pro-slavery quibble has been raised from the descrigj^ions 
contained in such passages as Gen. xiii. 2, 24, xxxv. 30, 43, &c., 
that Abraham's servants must have been slaves, because they are 
mentioned in connection with beasts and other property. But if 
this mode of reasoning be correct, then according to Gen. xii. 5, 
Abraham's wife Sarah, and Lot his nephew, must have been his 
slaves also. So according to Ex. xx. 17, and v. 21, all wives 
must have been slaves or property. Nay, further, from the words 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 37 

in the command, " nor anything that is thy neighbor's,''^ it appears 
that all the husbands, parents, children, and other relations, com- 
prising in fact the whole Israelitish nation, must have been slaves ! 
But under such strange circumstances the material inquiry in*- 
stantly occurs, where did they all find masters % S,o accordino- to 
the same logic we see from Job i. 3, 4. ; xlii. 12, 13, that Job's 
wife and children must have been his slaves. Our common law 
must also render all servants under its jurisdiction slaves, because 
it gives precisely the same remedies to masters for injuries done 
to their servants, that it does to their beasts and other property. 
So where a nation acquires new territory by treaty or otherwise 
it must by the law of nations sustain the same relation to the in- 
habitants of the territory, that it does to the territory itself, and 
as the latter is property the former must be property also. But 
enough of these absurd consequences in reply to nonsense. The- 
pro-slavery mistake is made by confounding the relations of per- 
sons with those of things, merely because the latter happen to be 
mentioned in connection with the former, while it always appears 
from the whole context, describing the condition of the ancient 
Hebrew servants, that by the gift or transfer of persons and pro- 
perty in the same transaction, the opposite relations previously 
existing between them and the donors were not altered as be- 
tween them and the donors. This case finely illustrates the so- 
phistry which relates apart of a narrative or story only, the effect of 
which is often the same as telling a fasehood — as by means of it 
we are able to prove from the Scriptures themselves, that there is 
no God. See Ps. xiv. 1 j liii. 1, &c. 



CHAPTER XI. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Examination of Ex. xii. 43, 45; xx. 17: xxi. 2—6,7,11,20,21: Deut. xv 
12-18; xxi. 10,14. ' 

It is not to be supposed that 'after the lapse of so many thousand 
years, we can now fully understand the exact nature of the cus- 
tomary ancient Hebrew servitudes which in some way were so 
4 



38 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE AKGUMENT. 

different from our own. Nor is it to be expected that we can 
now fully understand the exact intended application of all the 
short political as w^ell as moral statutes in the Levitical Law. 
Like other very ancient writings, much obscurity must rest and 
remain on most of them. They were evidently intended to regu- 
late and restrain the ancient legal customs which then prevailed 
among the Israelites, probably in common with all the other an- 
cient oriental nations — these statutes holding a similar relation to 
those customs, that our modern national and state constitutions do 
to our other laws and customs — while a critical examination of 
the same statutes shows that the spirit if not the letter of them is 
just as useful now as it ever was, to regulate, and restrain, and 
guide all human legislation — no other laws now existing being so 
perfectly adapted to secure the temporal as well as spiritual hap- 
piness of mankind as those contained in the ancient Levitical 
code. 

It appears from the statute in Ex. xii. 43, 45, that though ser- 
vants "bought for money" could eat the passover after they had 
been circumcised, yet neither strangers nor foreigners, nor hired 
servants were permitted to eat it, so that since these bought ser- 
vants were allowed a greater privilege than hired servants and 
strangers were, we may safely conclude without further comment, 
that this was a case of the free and voluntary sale of such servants 
by themselves. •! We see from the 48th and 49th verses of the same 
chapter, that no legal distinctions were made by the Levitical 
law, between the rights of strangers and native Israelites, as they 
were to be governed by the same laws, and the phrase " he shall 
be as one born in the land,'''' also proving that after circumcision 
these adopted foreigners were as much " brethren" and " children 
of Israel" as the native Jews were — a rule well worthy of the 
consideration of those who are in favor of disfranchising foreign- 
ers. It should be further remarked that under one single code of 
laws intended to govern all the individuals in a nation, it is im- 
possible to make any distinction in the natural rights of those in- 
dividuals, or any of them. As Dr. Duncan* long since observed, 
it is certainly a very strange circumstance that the tenth cora- 

* In a work of 136 pages by the Rev. James Duncan, the father of the Hon. Alex- 
ander Duncan, Member of Congress from Cincinnati, lirst published at Vcvay, la., 
1824; and republished by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1840. 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 39 

mandment (Ex. xx. 17 ; Deut. v. 21, &c.) should ever have been 
pressed into the service of human slavery, because that practice is 
a direct violation or breach of this as v/ell as of the eighth com- 
mandment — it being impossible for one person to enslave another, 
vi^ithout first " coveting," or eagerly desiring what he knows is 
not morally and justly his own — and cannot therefore morally 
and justly belong to him, as he himself would instantly see and 
acknowledge, were he himself, or his family, or friends, to be 
themselves enslaved. This command being then a direct con- 
demnation of human slavery, it is most wickedly absurd to quote 
the same in its defence when it can only be honestly quoted for 
its condemnation. I have already sufficiently illustrated the other 
absurd consequences that result from this wicked pro-slavery 
perversion. 

The statutes in Ex. xxi. 2 — 6, and Deut. xv. 12 — 18, limit the 
voluntary sales of native Hebrew servants for the payment of their 
•debts, to the period of six years at a time. While it appears from 
Lev. XXV. 44 — 46, and other passages, that adopted foreign ser- 
vants might sell themselves for still longer periods, even up to the 
Jubilee. The political reason or policy of this distinction was, 
that foreigners could not hold real estate in the nation any longer 
than the Jubilee, when all the land in the country reverted back 
to its original owners or their heirs (see Lev. xxv. 10 — 13, &c.), 
so that as poor foreign immigrants into the nation could seldom 
obtain any land at all, it would frequentl}' be more convenient for 
them to contract for periods of service longer than six years, 
though none were permitted to extend bej'ond the Jubilee. In 
Ex. xxi. 2, the description is, " if thou buy (procure) a Hebrew 
servant," &c. — but by whom and of whom is not said. The 
proper inquiry therefore is, did Hebrew servants of this descrip- 
tion " sell themselves" as free and voluntary servants, as the 
Egyptians did to Joseph 1 Or were they sold by third persons to 
others as slaves, as Joseph was by hu' brethren to the Ishmaelites % 
for the words " buy" and " sell" prove nothing either way. So 
far as we now know anything about the mode of sales of service, 
the servants certainly " sold themselves" (Gen. xlvii. 19, 23 ; 
Lev. xxv. 47) by free and voluntary contract, just as poor foreign 
immigrants are now sometimes said to do. The use of the words 
and phrases here alluded to proves nothing against this mode, be- 
cause a person who "sells himself" is still " bought" and "sold" 



40 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT, 

just as the Egyptians were when they sold themselves to Joseph 
to be Pharaoh's servants. Besides, were this statute intended to 
regulate slave sales, there is no probability that they would have 
been limited to the period of six years, but would have been in 
perpetuity like the sales of other property. For these reasons the 
statute was undoubtedly intended to regulate free and voluntary 
service. But it appears from the whole statute (Ex. xxi, 2 — 6), 
that though these sales were free and voluntary as well as limited, 
yet they might in one case be extended by an addition to the 
original contract. To understand the true meaning of the trans- 
action we must recollect, that it was limited to the case of mar- 
riage by the servant during his term. The wife being a servant 
as well as the husband, when her term of service extended beyond 
his, he would be separated from his family, if he left his master's 
service at the expiration of his own term. If in those circum- 
stances he wished to remain longer in service, the policy of th6 
statute was to render the new contract a public legal transaction, 
and matter of legal record, so that the mastfer should take no ad- 
vantage of his superior power to oppress the servant therein, the 
Hebrew legal custom of boring the ear being used by the ^judges 
to ratify it. While it is at the same time perfectly clear from the 
language of the statute, that to the last transaction, whatever the 
first was, the servant was a free and voluntary party ; so that if he 
became a slave for life, as many pretend he did, he did so by his 
own free choice and request ; while if his family were slaves also, 
he must have been excessively foolish to have become so for the 
sake of living with them, when the master might lawfully sell and 
separate them from him at any time, just as our modern slave- 
holders do. The Almighty never enacted a law to sanction such 
absurdity as this, because he never does anything in vain. 

The statutes now under consideration, Ex. xxi. 2-6 ; Deut. xv. 
12 — 18, were evidently enacted for the special benefit of the ser- 
vant and not of the master. The length of time the former was 
bound to serve under the new contract is translated " for ever" in 
the common English Bible, which is doubtless an incorrect literal 
translation. The two Hebrew words in most common use to ex- 
press general terms or periods of time are " Edk''^ and " olaum^^ 
the exact ancient use and meaning of which it is not certain we 
now know. All that we now certainly know about them is, that 
"£(/A" means time certain, fixed, and definite, while '■'■ olawr'''' 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 41 

(alone used in these statutes) means time unseen, hidden, and 
indefinite, probably nearly the same as our English words "ever" 
and " always," and is certainly used in the Scriptures in a manner 
nearly as indefinite as we use these adverbs. 

When these two words are used together they are commonly 
translated "forever," "everlasting," "eternal," &c., as " olaum" 
sometimes is when used alone, though they never literally mean 
thus, except when the subject matter admits of eternal duration. 
But as.it always means a period or term of some kind, we are left 
to conjecture what that was in these statutes. It is ridiculous to 
understand it to mean eternal duration in them, because the period 
or terra of service could not extend beyond the natural lives of 
the servant and his family, and by the same code of laws no ser- 
vant could serve as such beyond the Jubilee. The period really 
intended by the statutes must therefore be ascertained by their 
object, which was in the case of the new contract, to prevent the 
separation of servants from their families. Judging from this ob- 
ject and from the fact that some finite period or term of time must 
have been intended, the most reasonable and satisfactory construc- 
tion or explanation is, that it was the unexpired balance of the 
wife's term, which might extend to the Jubilee, but never in any 
■ case beyond it. This construction is the most likely to be cor- 
rect, and it is the more just and conclusive, as it corresponds with 
the spirit of the Scriptures, and harmonizes the latter, while any 
other construction is almost sure to confuse them. The statutes 
provided in Ex. xxi.. 7 — 11, and Deut. xxi. 10, 14, were made to 
regulate the well known oriental custom of buying and sellijig 
daughters and female wards for wives. Contrary to our own 
custom in such cases, by which parents .and guardians give por- 
tions, dowries, or endowments.to their daughters and female wards 
when they marry, and which usually becomes the property of 
their husbands ; ancient oriental husbands, when they married, 
gave the parents or guardians of their wives the same considera- 
tion or compensation, and were thus said to "buy" or "pur- 
chase," and the parents or guardians to " sell" them their wives — ■ 
the whole custom being just as free and equal or equitable as 
our own is. In this way Jacob purchased his two wives by four- 
teen years of hard labor. Gen. xxix. 15 — 20. Several other ex- 
amples of the same custom are recorded in the Scriptures, see 
Gen. xxiv. 4, 22, 38, 48, 51, 53 j Deut. xxii. 28, 29 ; Judg. i. 12, 



% 

42 ANTI-SLAVEKV BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

13; Ruth iv. 10; 1 Sam. xviii. 25, 27; Hos: iii. 2, &c. The 
statute in Ex. xxi. 7, 11, is somewhat obscure, but seems to have 
been intended for the case of betrothal before marriage, agreeably 
to the oriental custom here alluded to, and was made to prevent 
the abuse of that custom. As her intended husband had paid the 
customary dowry for her, the custom probably allowed him to 
receive it back from any other preferred suitor ; but if she had 
none such, and he still refused to marry her, the statute gave it 
to her as reasonable damages for his violation of the contract. So 
if he had purchased her for one of his sons, but refused to com- 
plete the contract by actual marriage, tlie statute gave her the 
same measure of damages. 

By the statute in Deut. xxi. 10, 14-, the husband was allowed 
the right of voluntary divorce, if he became dissatisfied with his 
heathen wife — but as he had given no dowry or sum to obtain her, 
it was unreasonable he should obtain one after he had divorced 
her, and as he would be sure to injure her by the divorce, this 
statute wisely provided that no pecuniary consideration or temp- 
tation should ever be allowed to influence the transaction, so that 
although the divorced w'oman might afterwards marry again, the 
first husband should derive no benefit from her second mai-riage. 
As the Scriptures everywhere encourage matrimony for the grati- 
fication of honest love, they permitted it in this case for that pur- 
pose even between true believers and heathens, but allowed this 
voluntary divorce as a remedy for the evil consequences that 
would sometimes be likely to ensue from such unions. It is very 
remarkable, that in this case and that in 1 Cor. vii. 15, heathenism 
was permitted to be a sufficient cause for voluntary divorce, be- 
cause according to Eph. ii. 15 ; iv. IS, &,c., heathen persons are 
considered as spiritually dead, and as such most dangerous com- 
panions to true believers, from which doctrine most Christian 
legislators have perhaps correctly inferred, that where Christian 
husbands and wives behave like heathen, or perhaps worse than 
heathen, as by long wilful absence, by extreme cruelty, gross ne- 
glect, base fraud, &,c., the same conduct ought, in addition to adul- 
tery, to be sufficient causes of divorce to the injured party. 

Ex. xxi. 20, 21, is a statute regulating a peculiar case of homi- 
cide which would be liable to great abuse without such a regula- 
tion. As the oriental custom in common with that -allowed mas. 
ters to give their servants necessary and reasonable correction the 



PEO-SLAVERY PEEVEESIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 43 

same as to children (see Deut- viii. 5 ; Prov. iii. 12, xiii. 24-, 
xix. 18, xxiii. 13, 14, xxix. 15, 17 ; Heb. xii. 7, 9, &c.), to pre- 
vent the abuse of this right the statute declared it to be what we 
call manslaughter, and subjected the master to the vengeance of 
the relations of the deceased servant, to kill a servant during his 
chastisement, even with the ordinary instrument of punishment, 
a provision that never would have been enacted had Hebrew ser- 
vants been the lawful property of their masters ; because every 
man might then, as he may now, lawfully slaughter his beasts, and 
destroy his other property at his own discretion, provided that in 
so doing he do not infringe the rights of others, which could not 
in this case be done to the servants if they were slaves, because 
the latter could have no rights to infringe. 

The Hebrew text of the 20th verse literally reads, "he shall 
surely be avenged," probably meaning thereby that the relations 
of the deceased servant might kill the master, provided they could 
overtake him before he reached a city of refuge, agreeably to the 
statutes recorded in Num. xxxv. 14 — 21, 30, 32 ; Deut. xix. 2 — 7, 
11 — 13 ; Josh. XX, 2, 9, &c. Some are of opinion, from the great 
strength, of the expression here quoted, that the master, in case of 
the immediate death of the servant, was to be punished as a mur- 
derer, even though he reached a city of refuge. But however 
this might have been, in order to prevent the abuse of the statute 
itself, it was provided in the 21st verse, that if the servant did not 
immediately die from the chastisement, that circumstance, to- 
gether with the fact that it was for' the master's interest to pre- 
serve the life of the servant, should be sufficient presumptive evi- 
dence of accidental death, that the master had no murderous in- 
tent, and that he ought not therefore to be punished at all. It is 
my opinion that the phrase " for he is his money," applies equally 
to both of these verses, and was intended as the special reason 
why, as the master was interested to preserve the life of the ser- 
vant, he ought not to be held guilty of murder, in either of these 
cases of homicide.. It is also certain that this very phrase is even 
now sometimes used in a free sense, being borro^yed perhaps from 
thii very statute — a statute provided for the special benefit and 
protection of both masters and servants in a case which would be 
liable to the greatest abuse without it, from the extreme irritation 
produced by such transactions — all other cases of murder, maim, 
and other abuses of servants by their masters, being regulated by 



44< ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

the statutes against those crimes, see Ex. xxi. 12 — 14, 26, 27, 32, 
&c. It is proper to remark in this connection that though the 
oriental custom permitted parents, as we have seen, to chastise 
their chiklren with the same instrument, yet no similar statute 
was provided in the Levitical law, for the homicide of children 
by their parents. The reason of this omission was the presump- 
tion that the natural affection of the latter would always prevent 
that crime, but which would be wanting sufficiently to protect 
the rights of servants, and prevent the abuse of the same by their 
masters v>fithout the assistance of special legislation. 



CHAPTER XII. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Examination of Lev. xxv. 39—43, 44— 4G, 47—54. ' 

Lev. XXV. 39 — 43, and 47 — 54, are other Levitical statutes regu- 
lating the voluntary sales of free Hebrew servants, made for the 
payment of their debts previously contracted, as is evident from 
the statutes themselves, and as has been sufficiently illustrated and 
explained. This fact appears very plainly from the latter statute, 
and from the 25th to the 32d verses of the same chapter, where 
the redemption provided for would be impossible and absurd, 
were they not for the payment of such debts ; for it is certain that 
the servants " sold themselves," which tlfey could not have done 
without payment, which they must have received at or before the 
time of their sales, for otherwise they would have nothing to 
redeem themselves for or from after sale. It also appears from 
these " redemptions" that these "sold" and "bought" servants 
must have been in debt to or owed their masters, which they could 
not have done had they been slaves, anymore than beasts or other 
lawful property could. They were therefore all free and volun- 
tary servants. We see also from these statutes that foreigners 
settled in the nation had the same customary right to purchase 
native servants, that the native Israelites themselves had. But in 
the latter case the servants might be redeemed at any time by the 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 45 

payment of the debts they had sold themselves for, and as (v. 49) 
the servants might if they were able redeem themselves, this very 
fact also proves that they could not be property or slaves, because 
no slave has a right to property, and can acquire none but what 
belongs to his master. The'^same statutes taken in connection with 
the 10th and 13th verses of the chapter also prove, that the con- 
tract for these voluntary sales could last only till the next Jubi- 
lee, when all poor servants were not only discharged from such 
contracts, but the native seA'ants were restored to the possession 
of their paternal inheritance or estates. 

A multitude of laws have been contrived in the world, to pre- 
vent the suffering and oppression of the poor and the helpless, but 
the whole of them put together are but trifles for that purpose, 
when compared with the statutes embodied in the Levitical law, 
and especially those contained in Leviticus xxv., for it was 
impossible for much oppression of the poor to exist where these 
regulations were faithfully observed, it being only where they 
were disregarded and violated that such oppression was ever com-t 
plained of among the Jews, see Neh. v. 1 — 13 ; Jer. xxxiv. 8, 22, 
&c. Multitudes of persons, including many professed preachers 
of the gospel, seriously contend that the Scriptures do not teach 
politics or political matters at all. But the single statute in Lev. 
xxv. 8 — 15, providing for the great institution of the Jubilee, had 
a more extensive and abiding political effect, and produced more 
extensive political as well as moral consequences, than the whole 
of the political measures heretofore made the objects of party 
strife in the United States put together. The statutes under con- 
sideration and others of a similar character interspersed throughout 
the Levitical law (see Ex. xxii. 21—27, xxiii. 9 ; Lev. xix. 33, 
34, xxv. 35 — 37; Deut. xv. 7, 11, &c.), also exhibit the extreme 
care and tenderness manifested in that law, for the support and 
protection of the poor, and needy, and helpless, and especially for 
poor foreigners and strangers. No such statutes are provided in 
this code for the protection of the wealthy and powerful, and their 
usurped rights, as abound in most human codes, for the very suffi- 
cient reason that the rich need no such protection under that or 
any other righteous code. I hold it to be the height of wicked- 
ness to pretend that such a code as this was intended to sanction 
such a practice as human slavery. 



46 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

Preparatory to a critical examination of the celebrated statute 
contained in Lev. xxv. 44 — 46, it will be necessary to correct 
the common English translation of it, the same being the falsest 
translation I ever saw. The exact literal translation of it is as 
follows: verse 44 — "And thy man servant, and thy maiden, 
which shall be to thee (shall be) from the nations which surround 
you. From them shall ye procure (the) man servant and the 
maiden." 

Verse 45. " And also from the sons of the foreigners, the stran- 
gers among you, from them shall ye procure — and from their 
families which (are) among you, which they brought forth into 
your land, and (they) shall be to you for a possession." 

Verse 46. " And ye shall possess them yourselves for your sons 
after you, for to possess (as) a possession. For ever of them shall 
ye serve yourselves. And over your brethren the sons of Israel, 
man towards his brother, thou shalt not rule over with rigor." 

This is as exact a literal translation of the statute as can be 
%nade, though the phraseology of it "may be so varied in several 
instances, as to read in a more elegant English idiom, without any 
alteration or variation of its true meaning. The words wanting 
in the Hebrew text, but supplied for the sake of perspicuity and 
precision in English, are enclosed in brackets. The slightest 
comparison of this with the common English translation, will show 
how false and absurd the latter must be. Thus the two Hebrew 
words evedh and ama-u, falsely translated "bond men" and " bond 
maids" in the common translation, are both in the singular num- 
ber in the Hebrew text, literally meaning "manservant" and 
"maid" or " maiden," in Hebrew, and as such are correctly trans- 
lated " servant" and " maid" in the common translation of the 6th 
verse of the same chapter ! ! The word " quaunah^'' impro- 
perly translated "buy" in the 44th and 45th verses, ought to have 
been literally rendered, procure, acquire, obtain, &c., in the same 
passages. The Hebrew word goim, falsely translated " heathen" 
in the 44th verse, always literally means " nations," and should 
in whatever it occurs be thus rendered. The Hebrew word 
nauhul, rendered " possess" in my translation, which is the near- 
est to its literal meaning, may sometimes perhaps be correctly 
rendered "inherit," "redeem," &c., according to the subject 
matter treated of, as it is in some parts of the English Scriptures, 
but which do not express its true meaning in the present case, as 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 47 

we shall soon see. The true meaning of these words was thus 
perverted in the common translation, because since there were no 
words in the Hebrew language answering to our English word 
" slave," " slaveholder," " slavery," &c., King James' translators, 
in imitation of the Catholic priests who first forged these perver- 
sions, falsely dressed up their English version of this statute, so as 
to resemble the modern Christian practice of negro slavery as nearly 
as possible — that species of slavery having at the period of their 
translation, under the sanction of these and similar perversions of 
the Scriptures, become very extensive, respectable, and popular, 
in several Christian countries, especially in their tropical terri- 
tories. Like the false priests and Pharisees of old, these translators, 
in connection with many other corruptionists of their time, and 
with still more now existing, thus falsified the true word of God 
to gratify a corrupt public sentiment, and please their principal 
patrons for the sake of worldly popularity. 

This statute was rendered necessary in the Levitical code from 
the fact, that by the operation of the statutes for the original 
distribution of land and the institution of the Jubilee, it was im- 
possible for foreigners settling in the Israelitish nation and for 
their posterity to hold any real estate except during very short 
periods, so that it was necessary for them and their posterity, so 
long as they remained in the nation, to be the servants of the 
native Israelites, the lineal descendants of Abraham and Shem. 
It was in this sense alone that the Jewish nation as such, 
and not the individuals composing it, were to " inherit," or rather 
possess these adopted foreigners and their posterity, for the pur- 
pose of free and voluntary service only. To understand this 
intent of the statute the better it is necessary to premise, that in 
many parts of the Old Testament, agreeably to a Hebrew, or 
rather ancient oriental idiom, where a general address is in the 
singular number (see Ex. xx. 2 — 16 ; Prov. i. 8 ; Eccle. xii. 1), 
each individual of a nation to whom the directions of the address 
are applicable, is addressed separately or singly — ^but where a 
general address is in the plural number (see Deut. iv. 1 — 8, 15, 
16, &c.), the whole nation is addressed as one people. This is a 
general rule in the Old Testament, the principal exception to it 
being where a nation is personified and addressed accordingly, as 
in Deut. xxvii. 1, 2, 4, xxxi. 20, &c. 

Bearing this rule in mind, the critical reader of the statute 



48 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

under review will observe, that at the commencement and con- 
clusion of the statute, the Jews were addressed distributivehj^ 
or in the singular number, as separate individuals, while in the 
remainder of the statute they were addressed collectively, or in 
the plural number, as a whole nation or people. 

This change of the address is a circumstance which indicates, 
more than any other the principal object of the statute which was 
to encourage the settlement of foreigners in the Jewish nation, 
and provide for their support, for the more effectual promotion of 
the true religion — for which purpose it was the most equitable 
and excellent naturalization act that ever existed in this world. 
For the same righteous purpose each native Israelite was allowed 
by the statute, to procure as many of these foreign servants as he 
chose, by contracts made with the servants themselves, or with 
their parenls or guardians, in which sense, and by which means 
alone, the native Jews and their posterity, were to " inherit" or 
" possess" these adopted foreigners and their posterity, by circum- 
cision and incorporation into the body of the nation, after which 
the latter became as much " brethren" and " children of Israel" as 
the lineal descendants of Abraham were,; while to prevent abuses 
of the custom, the usual salutary caution was appended to the 
end of the statute, forbidding the oppression of their poor brethren 
"by individual masters. Lev. xix. 13, xxv. 17, 43 ; Mai. iii. 5, 
&c. It is well here to inform the reader that this is the universal 
construction of this statute by the Jews as a people, a circum- 
stance that could not have happened, had the intent of it been to 
sanction human slavery. No respectable Jew now living pretends 
to any such belief, because the Jews have always considered it 
wicked. They still retain their ancient custom of employing 
servants differing from them in religious belief, which seems to be a 
perversion of it, agreeably to which the servants were to be of the 
same religious faith with their masters ; and also absurd, since the 
reason of the original custom has long since ceased. 

This scriptural ancient Hebrew use of the words "buy" and 
" sell" will be the better understood and appreciated by compar- 
ing it with the modern use of the English word " hire," used for 
a similar purpose. Free servants are now customarily said to be 
" themsehes hired," and to " hire out themselves," &c., which is 
not in fact literally true, though to us from habit it is so. The 
employer of modern free servants has in fact no property in the 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 49 

servants themselves, but only in their time, labor and skill, which 
only he really hires. In like manner ancient Hebrew masters 
acquired no property in their "bought" and "sold" servants, but 
only in their time, labor and skill — both this ancient and modern 
phraseology being thus incorrectly used, merely to avoid incon- 
venient circumlocutions. 



CHAPTER "X 1 1 1 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

(^Continued.) 

Examination of Deut. xx. 10—20; Josh. ix. 22,23,27; 1 Kings ix. 21, 26; 
2 Kings iv. 1, &c.; Neh. v. 5—13 ; Jer. xxxiv. S— 17. 

In Deut. xx. 10 — 20, is the statute regulating the treatment and 
disposal of those Canaanites, who should voluntarily submit to the 
Israelites about to invade their territory, as they are bound to 
agreeably to the promise of God to Abrahahti, which promise they 
doubtless well knew. According to the statute those who peacea- 
bly submitted were not to be exterminated, or banished, or in any 
respect enslaved, but were to become tributary to the Jews, just 
as the Egyptians who sold themselves to Joseph to be Pharaoh's 
servants, merely became tributary to the latter — while those who 
should refuse to submit and dared to resist contrary to the divine 
command, were with one exception to be exterminated, or de- 
stroyed. In Josh. ix. 22, 23, 27, and 1 Kings ix. 21, 26, are 
recorded two cases of the practical application of this statute under 
peculiar circumstances. There is not the slightest evidence now 
existing to prove that this statute was ever intended or used to 
promote the practice of human slavery. The objects of the 
statutes were, not only to give the Jews the country promised to 
them, but also, either to reform or else to destroy the aboriginal 
inhabitants, neither of which could have been effected had they 
been reduced to slavery — for in that case it would have been just 
as impossible to have allowed to them the rights and privileges 
secured by the Levitical law, without which they could not have 
been reformed, as it is to our slaves now, and if they were allowed 



50 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGtJMENT. 

to live among the Jews, without reformation even as slaves, they 
would soon corrupt the whole nation. For these reasons the 
statute provided, either for their entire submission, or for their 
entire destruction — and it was only when the statute was disre- 
garded, that they corrupted the people, and seduced them into 
their own destructive sins, see Judg. ii. 10 — 23, iii. 5, 7, 12 — 14. 
Besides, the individuals composing nations rendered merely tribu- 
tary to others, are never held as property or slaves, the who^ 
nation rather than its inhabitants being subjected. And thus even 
the Hebrews, though persecuted through " hard bondage" by the 
Egyptians, Ex. i. 14, ii. 23, &c., were in no respect held as pro- 
perty or slaves, as the whole history of their persecution clearly 
proves. 

In 2 Kings iv. 1, Neh. v. 5 — 13, and Jer. xxxiv. 8 — 17, are 
several cases of severe prophetic denunciations and reproofs for 
violations of the Levitical statutes regulating free and voluntary 
service, which have just been reviewed. These cases illustrate 
the extreme facility with which the rich and powerful are prone 
to oppress the poor and helpless. But they also answer the im- 
portant purpose of proving, that these political statutes must have 
been free or intended to regulate free service only, for had they 
been intended to regulate slave service or slavery, their violations 
never would have been complained of in the Scriptures, because 
such violations, according to the complaints made in the passages 
themselves, had the strongest tendency to promote and strengthen 
slavish oppression, and God is repeatedly declared in ithe Scrip- 
tures never to do anything in vain, see Ps. cxi. 7 ; Isa. xlv. 18, Ii. 
6, Iv. 11 ; Jer. xxxi. 35, 36 ; Eze. vi. 10 ; Matt. x. 20, xxiv. 35 ; 
Luke xii. 36 j Rom. ii. 2, iv. 16 ; 2 Tim. ii. 19, &.c. He would 
never, therefore, have enacted laws for any purpose whatever, and 
at the same time condemn and forbid the use of the very means 
best adapted to promote and secure that purpose, for human 
slavery cannot be supported without worse oppression than is com- 
plained of in these passages. This single circumstance is an irre- 
futable objection to the pretended slavish nature of the ancient 
Hebrew servitudes. The whole history of the ancient Jevish 
nation, both sacred and profane, is interspersed with their viola- 
tions of the Levitical code of laws, and especially of the statutes 
for the regulation of free service among the rest similar to those 
contained in the passages under consideration. On account of 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMEKT. 51 

which same violations without repentance and reformation, the 
Jewish nation was, by the long threatened judgments of God, at 
last overthrown and destroyed. ♦ 

Among these violations as they are recorded in the Scriptures, 
the sin of human oppression stands out the most conspicuous, as 
the numerous passages I have already quoted go far to prove. 
Yet multitudes of pro-slavery Christians at the present time con- 
tend, that these same oppressive violations, which overthrew and 
destroyed ancient Israel, are strong evidence that God sanctions 
the most oppressive practice in the world ! ! ! 

It is to be remembereom this connection that the cases now 
under review are those of strong censure for violations of the 
Levitical statutes, and not of approbation for obedience to them. 
With persons who are in the habit of quoting violations of laws, 
as evidence by analogy and not by contrast of what the laws them- 
selves are, such reasoning may pass for sound logic, the same as 
that which quotes the bondage of the Jews in Egypt so severely 
condemned in the Scriptures, in justification of every other kind 
of oppression, and the massacre of infants by Pharaoh and Herod, 
in justification of all other massacres, or in other words to quote 
the divine condemnation of sins, in moral justification of the 
sins condemned ! ! It is in fact quoting one of two moral oppo- 
sites, to show by analogy and not by contrast, what the other is. 
What would be thought of an advocate who would in a court of 
justice quote legal convictions of murder and other crimes con- 
demned in a code of laws, as evidence that those crimes Avere 
legalized and sanctioned by the same code '? Yet there are thou- 
sands of minds in the United States sufficiently perverted and 
corrupted by slavery, thus to attempt the moral justification of 
that great crime — for as the latter is founded on perversions and 
other sins, so it perverts all minds within the sphere of its vicious 
influence — one perversion, like any other sin, being sure to produce 
eff"ects similar to itself. The specific violations or sins complained 
of and threatened in the passages quoted from Nehemiah and Jere- 
miah were the neglect and refusal of the wealthy Jews to allow 
to their servants the full privileges of the year of Release, the 
Jubilee, and the redemptions by which the latter were discharged 
from service — in consequence of which violations, these servants 
were not only oppressed at home, but were sometimes obliged to 
sell themselves to the inhabitants of the neighboring nations, who 



52 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

had no such institutions, and allowed their servants no such privi- 
leges, as the whole account in the passages clearly proves. 

The Jews having been at this time just delivered from a 
long captivity, had lost much of their knowledge and respect for 
the Levitical law, for which reason these and other Prophets 
were sent to re-convert them to its obedience. It is proper also 
here to remark, that the Hebrew word falsely rendered " bond- 
men," in the common translation of 2 Kings iv. 1, is the plural 
number of the word " eyerfA," and thus literally means "men- 
servants," or "servants." So in every' instance where "bond- 
man" and " bond woman" occur in that translation, as in Gen. xxi. 
10, 12, 13, and other passages, they are translated from "eyc(/A" 
and " «?waM," the same literally meaning " man servant" or " ser- 
vant," and " maid servant" or " maiden," being thus literally and 
properly translated in several other passages, as in Ex. xx, 10 ■ 
Lev. XXV. 6 ; Neh. v. 5, &c. jIs there were no- Hebrew words for 
" slave,'''' " slavesy'^ Src, when King James' translators found pas- 
sages which they thought bore the strongest resemblance to the 
then popular practice of negro slavery, they selected the English 
words that came nearest to the latter meaning, without any regard 
to the literal import of the words in the Hebrew text, or the real 
doctrine intended to be inculcated by the latter. The foregoing 
are all the passages in the Old Testament worthy of special notice 
in this connection, that have been perverted for the moral justifi- 
cation of human slavery. These wicked perversions were forged 
about four hundred and fifty years ago, to justify negro slavery, 
which had then lately commenced among Christians ; the same 
perversions having previous to that time been entirely unknown, 
at least unknown among Christians, who had long before entirely 
renounced human slavery. After they had first been forged by 
the Catholics, Protestant theologians copied and adopted them as 
so much sound Christian doctrine, and that apparently without any 
critical examination or other care. Protestants who were so sharp 
as to detect those Catholic perversions which justified their own 
persecutions, were ;perfectly blind to the nature of those perver- 
sions which were intended to justify the persecution of negroes 
and other heathen. These perversions having been thus intro- 
duced and recommended, all the modern writers on the Hebrew 
servitudes have until very recently concurred in their pretended 
belief of the slavish nature of those servitudes, they having merely 



TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 



53 



copied from each other without apparent examination or care. 
Abundance of this kind of concurrent human testimony can be 
found in favor of the moral righteousness of negro and other 
heathen slavery, and which many American Christians are fond of 
quoting for that purpose. But as this is after all nothing but 
human testimony made up of human opinions, so I trust the whole 
of it has now been shown to be erroneous and false. So well 
settled, and so popular indeed had the pro-slavery doctrines 
derived from them become, that Mr. Crothers seems to have been 
the first Christian writer in the world who dared, in 1833, to call 
the whole of these absurd perversions in question. He was soon 
succeeded by Mr. Dickey. And the latter by Mr. Wield, and 
other anti-slavery writers, so that the theological credit of these 
wicked perversions is now extensively shaken. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 

Having thus directly proven from the texts of the Old Testament, 
usually perverted for the justification of human slavery, that none 
of them did in the least degree sanction such slavery, but on the 
contrary regulated free and voluntary service only, I proceed 
next to produce twelve special facts, or doctrines contained in the 
Scriptures and the Law of Nature, as circumstantial evidence to 
prove the utter impossibility of the ancient Patriarchal and He- 
brew servitudes being slavish, or in any other way oppressive. 
My readers will please to remember the fact, that the advocates 
of the pretended slavery sanctioned by the Old Testament, always 
refuse to quote any other part of the Scriplures in relation to the 
subject, except the few isolated passages which they contend 
justify slavery, thus entirely neglecting to examine the spirit of 
the Scriptures in relation to it — contrary to the universal rule of 
ethical construction, so to construe each part of every code of 
laws, that will admit of it, as to correspond with the general 
spirit and intent of the other parts, and thus promote the harmony 
of the whole code, by fulfilling the whole intent of the legislators 
who enacted it. The facts here alluded to are as follows: 
5 



54 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

I. The first and strongest of all these facts is, that teis pretence of 
Old Testament slavery has no true natural analogy to support it — 
a fact of immense interest to those who believe that the Laws of 
Nature and Revelation exactly harmonize. The ancient " bought" 
and " sold" Hebrew servants certainly " sold themselves," and 
there is no tradition or other history in the world, of the voluntary 
sales of people to be property or slaves. It is impossible there 
should have been, for human slavery is just as hostile and abhor- 
rent to the Law of Nature as any other crime of which man can 
be guilty, the same practice requiring the aid of other crimes for 
its support. For this reason human slavery is a state or condition 
of war, as much so as piracy or common robbery on the largest 
scale are — so that its victims, like those of murder, &.c., have 
always been compelled by criminal force and violence alone to 
submit to it, the same as are employed to perpetrate murder, 
robbery, &c., against the persons of men. It is therefore just as 
unreasonable and absurd to suppose, that the ancient Hebrew 
servants customarily and voluntarily placed themselves and their 
families in this unhappy and helpless condition, even in pursu- 
ance of statute law, as it is to suppose that they, or anybody else, 
ever customarily and voluntarily submitted to be murdered or 
robbed, or otherwise victimized by crime. Only think of God 
regulating a common custom by statute law, to the very existence 
of which torture and murder are necessary incidents ! ! Besides, 
human slavery never could have commenced in ancient Israel or 
anywhere else, or even been supported afterwards, without a 
direct and flagrant violation of the Levitical Law against man- 
stealing, as well as against the oppression of the poor and helpless. 
So much for the probability of the pretended ancient customary 
Hebrew slaver}^ 

II. The next most important of these facts is, the extreme moral 
violence of the Scriptures against the great sin of human oppres- 
sion, including of course the most oppressive practice in the 
world. There is not another book extant half so condemna- 
tory and denunciatory of this terrible sin, as the Scriptures, 
as a thousand extracts from all parts of them will testify. See 
Gen. vi. 11 ,• Ex. iii. 9, xii. 29, xiv. 28 ; Job xx. 19, xxvii. 13, 
23; Prov. i. 11; Isa. i. 15—24, x. 1—4, xiv. 2, xvi. 4, xix. 20, 
Iviii. 6, 7 ; Eze. vii. 23, 27, ix. 9, xviii. 10—13, xxii. 29, 31 j 



TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 55 

Amos iv. 1, viii. 4 — 8 ; Zeph. iii. 1 — -8 ; Zech. vii. 9, 14 ; Matt, 
xxiii. 14; James v. 4. 

From the prophetic and historical portions of the Scriptures we 
learn that more ancient nations were threatened and destroyed, 
for the commission of this sin, than for that of any other, — a most 
ominous warning to our own nation. Now, as such is the spirit 
or general and collective meaning of the whole Scriptures, and as 
God never does anything in vain, he certainly never intended any 
part of the letter of his Word to contradict its spirit, by establish- 
ing and sanctioning the most oppressive practice in the world, in 
the very Scriptures in which he had utterly condemned and for- 
bidden every form and degree of oppression, I will merely add, 
in confirmation of the doctrine, that the Scriptures have been given 
entirely in vain for any purpose voluntarily good, if any part of 
them was intended to sanction human slavery, because the latter 
is the moral opposite and antagonist of everything that is naturally 
good. But besides this general spirit of the Scriptures, several 
special statutes were enacted in the Levitical code, to prohibit 
the oppression of foreigners and strangers, such as in Ex. xxii. 21 ; 
Lev. xix, 33, 34, xxv. 35 ; Deut. i. 16, x. 18, 19, xxiv. 14, 15, 
17, &c., where the Israelites were forbidden under the heaviest pen- 
alties to " vex or oppress strangers,'''' and are also commanded to 
love, respect, and protect them. As Mr. Rankin has well remark- 
ed, " nothing could be a more direct violation of these statutes, 
than the practice of such slavery as exists in our slaveholding 
states, for nothing could more ' vex' or ' oppress' a stranger than 
such bondage. By these statutes, to defraud a stranger of a single 
day's wages is set down as a grievous crime, but how much more 
grievous and intolerable is the sin of taking from him both his 
liberty and labor for life !" Certainly if the ancient Israelites 
had a right to the practice of human slavery, they had a right to 
" vex and oppress" strangers as much as they pleased ; though as 
they had just been delivered from the most oppressive bondage 
themselves, their own experience of such oppression is alleged 
in the Levitical law as the strongest reason why they should 
refrain from oppressing others, especially strangers. It does cer- 
tainly seem as if those who believed the Almighty enacted such 
conflicting and contradictory statutes in the same code, must be a 
portion of the characters represented in the Scriptures as having 
been " given up to believe a lie." We also learn from the Levi- 



56 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

tical law (Deut. vii. 26, xiii, 17, xxiii. 18; Josh. vi. 18, vii. 11, 
&,c.) that no abomination or cursed thing was to be brought into 
the Lord's house, or to be otherwise tolerated in Israel, and we 
learn from the spirit of such passages as Isa. xxxiii. 15, and Jer. 
vii. 11, &c., that the gains of oppression were considered such. 
Christ drove the money changers out of the temple (Matt. xxi. 

12, 13, &c.) for the violation of these statutes, expressly calling 
them " thieves'' for that reason. A code containing such a pro- 
vision as this, could never have been intended to authorize such 
wicked gains as are obtained from a practice more oppressive than 
any kind of robbery, or any other known form of human oppression. 

III. The next of these important facts is, the existence of the 
numerous important legal rights and privileges expressly vested 
in all classes of the ancient Hebrew servants equally, by the letter 
of the Levitical law and other parts of the Old Testament — it 
being always to be remembered that according to the laws and 
customs of slavery, slaves have no legal rights and privileges what- 
ever, any more than beasts and other lawful subjects of property 
have. Thus, all classes of the ancient Hebrew servants were cir- 
cumcised the same as children ; Gen. xvii. 13, 23, 27 ; Ex. xii. 
44, 48. Those servants had the right of covenant with God ; 
Deut. xxix. 10, 11,13. They had a right to the passover and 
other feasts ; Ex. xii. 44, 48, 49, xxiii. 12 ; Lev. xxii. 11, xxv. 1, 
6, 8, 35. They enjoyed the Sabbath and its privileges; Ex. xx. 
10 ; Lev. xxv. 6. They had liberal wages and good treatment ; Lev. 
XIX. 13, xxv. 35 — 41; Deut. xv. 13, 14, xxiv. 14, 15 ; Jer. xxii. 

13, xxxiv. 14, 17, &c. They were instructed or educated ; Gen. 
xviii. 19 ; Josh. viii. 33, 35. They had a right to hold property 
and have servants of their own ; Lev. xxv. 49 ; 2 Sam. xvi. 4 ; 
They were governed by equal laws ; Ex. xii. 49 ; Deut. xvi. 18, 19 ; 
Josh viii. 33, 35 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 2 ; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 30. They 
might be heirs to their masters ; Gen. xv. 3 ; Prov. xvii. 2. They 
exercised the highest offices ; Gen. xv. 2, xxiv. 2 ; Prov. xvii. 
2. They might be soldiers ; Gen. xiv. 14. If their mas- 
ters abused them to the extent of mayhem, they were set free ; 
Ex. xxi. 26, 27. They might contend with their masters ; Job 
xxxi. 13. They might leave their masters for ill-usage, of which 
they were to be the sole judges ; Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. They en- 
joyed the great civil right of periodical freedom or discharge from 
service by contract, either at the year of release or at the Jubilee, 



TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 57 

or at both ; Ex. xxi. 2 ; Lev. xxv. 10 ; Deut. xv. 12 ; Neh. v. 1 1 ; 
Jer. xxxiv. 14-. 17. They married into their masters' families ; 
Ex. xxi. 8, 9 ; 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35. They were treated with respect ; 
1 Sam. ix. 22. The children and heirs of masters seem to have no 
more nor greater privileges than these servants had ; see Gal. iv. 1. 
Now as the legal enjoyment of any one of these rights and privi- 
leges will destroy slavery, how could it have existed in a nation 
where they were all allowed and enjoyed 1 And what right have 
we to believe that the Almighty ever established an institution in 
a code of laws which he had provided the surest means of sub- 
verting and destroying in the same code 1 It is undoubtedly 
highly absurd to imagine God capable of such absurdity. 

Mr. Weld in his Bible argument described several of these 
important rights and their effects at length, and has clearly proven, 
first, that they were common to every class of Hebrew servants, 
and secondly, that slavery could not have existed in the Jewish 
nation with their full exercise ; see Ex. xii. 48, 49 ; Numb. ix. 
14, XV. 15, 16, 29, &c. 

IV. Another of these decisive facts is the entire absence of any 
slave code, or body of slave regulations, in the Levitical law, or 
in any other part of the Old Testament, but on the contrary, as 
we have seen, the direct reverse of them in all respects. This 
omission and antagonism are unaccountable on the hypothesis of 
ancient Hebrew slavery, because every nation, ancient or mod- 
ern, which has ever practised human slavery, has necessarily 
adopted two distinct codes of laws, one for its free inhabitants, 
and the other for its slaves, — the latter being in all respects ex- 
ceedingly barbarous and cruel, because slavery cannot be sup- 
ported at all, without the assistance of the most barbarous cruelty. 
Each of our slave states has now such a code, in the fabrication 
and support of which our slaves had no more agency than so 
many cattle and horses. According to Stroud and other writers 
on the subject of these laws, by virtue of these slave codes in 
this enlightened republican country, more than seventy acts pun- 
ishable with death when committed by slaves, are either not pun- 
ishable at all, or else in a very light or mild degree when com- 
mitted by freemen, — so that the torture and murder of slaves is 
legalized in the slave States. Yet the whole of this barbarous 
and criminal legislation is indispensable to the support of slavery, 
because crime can only be supported by crime. 



58 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMERT. 

Now, as there is no trace of any such code in the Levitical law, 
or any other part of the old Testament, but on the contrary, as 
all the Israelites were governed by one code only (Ex. xii. 49 ; 
Deut. xvi. 18, 19 ; Josh. viii. 33, 35, &c.), the omission can only 
be accounted for on the supposition that human slavery was in no 
respect sanctioned by the Levitical law, and did not exist in the 
ancient Hebrew nation at all. Had God authorized slavery by 
that law, he would certainly have enacted a slave code to support 
it, as indispensable means for that support, and the fact that he 
did not is sufficient evidence of itself alone, where there is no 
other, that he did not establish such an institution in ancient Israel. 
Nor is there any history of slavish or other oppression in that 
nation, either ancient or modern, except by the violation and not 
by the observance of the Levitical law, together with the conse- 
quent divine punishments of such violations. That great code 
was the most perfectly framed and adapted to prevent every 
species and degree of human oppression, of any that men were 
governed by, see Ex. xxii. 25, 27 ; Lev. xix. 9, 10, 15, xxiii. 
22 ; Deut. i. 17, xv. 7—15, xvi. 19, xxiv. 6, 10, 13, 19—22, 
xxvii. 19, &c. The spirit of these and the numerous similar 
provisions found in the Scriptures, ought to be infused into all the 
human legislation in the world. 

V. Another important and decisive fact is, that, as has been 
already remarked, there are no words in the Hebrew language 
corresponding in meaning with our English, and the ancient 
and modern words "slave," "slaveholder," "slavery," &c., a cir- 
cumstance which never could have happened had the practice of 
human slavery existed among the ancient Israelites, either with 
or without the Levitical law. Never did an important public insti- 
tution, custom, or practice, exist in any country in the world, 
without a distinct and specific name given to it in the language 
of the country. Accordingly the ancient Greeks and Romans, 
and other ancient nations, as well as the modern English, French, 
Spaniards, &.C., who have adopted and pursued the practice of 
human slavery, have each specific words or names for the practice 
itself, and for those who pursue it, and for their victims in the 
practice, in their respective languages. 

This fact alone is of itself sufficient also to prove that human 
slavery never could have existed among the ancient Hebrews. I 
do not know that God ever expressly created language in ths^ 



TWELVE CIRCITMSTANTIAL FACTS. 59 

world, but I do know that He created men with faculties and a 
disposition to give specific names to every important thing in the 
world, they were specially interested in or affected by, as the 
structure of every language in the world will testify.* 

VI. Another of these important facts is, the Levitical statute 
for the voluntary escape of the ancient Hebrew servants from 
their masters, contained in Deut, xxiii. 15, 16. Under this 
important statute the servant could leave his master's service 
whenever he pleased, and could not be compelled to return to 
that service without his own free consent ; he himself being, in 
every case, the sole judge of the justice and propriety of the 
whole transaction, the slatute being thus the direct moral and 
political opposite of our laws for the arrest and return of innocent 
fugitive slaves. This humane statute is the spirit of the whole 
Scriptures, and those violate that spirit who forcibly seize and 
return innocent fugitives from slavish oppression, or who do 
not shield and protect them, see Prov. xxxi. 8, 9 ; Isa, i. 17, 
xvi. 3, 4, Iviii. 7 ; Jer. xxi. 12, xxii. 3; Eze. xviii. 7; Oba. 10 — 
15; Zech. vii. 9 — 14; Matt. xxv. 35, &c. Some contend 
that this statute was for the relief of foreign fugitive ser- 
vants or slaves only, but the generality of the language of the 
statute proves, that it was intended for the benefit ol all servants 
alike, domestic as well as foreign. It is, however, a provision 
most effectually adapted to guard and protect the rights and happi- 
ness of servants that ever was devised in the world, the same being 
rendered necessary for that special purpose, by the uncommon 
liability of that class of persons to civil oppression, and will of 
itself alone, wherever it is adopted in legal practice, put an end to 
the practice of human slavery in a week, — a circumstance which 

* There is ?io icord in the. Hebrew language that means any such thing as our word 
slave. The Hebrew word which is in the king's translation rendered both 
servant and bond servant, is Gnabad ; the a is pronounced long in both syllables. The 
word is used five times in the Old Testament as a proper name, once by itself, in 
the case of the grandfather of David the King, where it is in our translation Obed — 
the nasal §•« being left off, following the Greek version of the Septuagint, and not the 
Hebrew. In four other instances it is used where it is compounded with other 
words — Obededom (gnabad Edom, the servant of Edo\n), Obadiah (gnabad 
Yaho^-augh, the servant of Jehovah), Abednego (gnabad nago, the servant of 
light), Ebedmelik (gnabad malak, the servant of the King). 

The root of this word is the verb Gnanbad (in the last syllabic the a is short as 
in sad), which is thus defined by the highest Hebrew authorities — to labor — to nilti- 
•vatc — to labor for, or serve any one — to be tributary. But if the word signifies a slave, 
then was father Adam in the garden of Eden a slave ; for God saw that '•' there 
was not a man to till" or cultivate the ground, and for this purpose he made man ; 
and the aforesaid word is the identical word there rendered " to till," or cultivate. 



60 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

leads us to marvel why, if God really intended to estab- 
lish such slavery by the Levitical law, He should insert a 
provision in the same code, which could not fail to prevent the 
commencement of the practice. It is truly wicked to imagine 
God capable of such folly, see Job iv. 17, 19, xl. 2, &c. Yet 
strange and horrible to relate, this very conduct in oppressed 
slaves, thus approbated and sanctioned by the law of God, is in an 
enlightened country, and among a people professing to believe in 
the Christian religion, considered as one of the most heinous 
crimes that slaves can commit, and such as to render them deserv- 
ing of the severest slave punishment ! ! And those freemen who 
have acted in accordance with the dictates of humanity and the 
Laws of God, and relieved those fugitives from slavery, have been, 
and some of them are now, suffering the penalty within the walls 
of the prisons of our Slave States. One man, like Gen. Lafayette, 
is extolled to the skies, and triumphal arches are erected through- 
out our land in his honor, because he left his country and volun- 
teered to aid us in obtaining our political rights and liberties ; 
while another is made to pass, not under an arch of triumphal 
wreaths, but under the arch of a prison door, to remain many 
years, because he aided his fellow mortals in obtaining, not their 
political, but their personal liberty. " Oh, my country, where 
is thy consistency V^ 

Such conduct reminds us of the persecution of Christians by the 
heathen, for their obedience to the Law of God. 

VII. Another fact of immense importance in this connection is, 
the great Levitical institutions of the year of Release and the 
Jubilee, see Ex. xxi. 2; Lev. xxv. 8, 13; Deut. xv. 12, &.c. 
These were both types of deliverance from spiritual bondage, but 
another great use was found in their civil policy. Out of the 
abundant caution in favor of the rights of men, these institutions 
were intended to prevent contracts for service extending beyond 
certain periods, and for the discharge of servants, not from slavery, 
which did not exist in the Hebrew nation, but from their own 
voluntary contracts for service (if indeed they could contract 
beyond those periods), which might otherwise be most oppress- 
ively extended beyond them. These institutions being thus estab- 
lished to protect civil liberty, could never have been extended to 
sanction human slavery — nor would God ever have enacted them, 
had He intended any such sanction; because, so long as they 



TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 61 

remained in force, it was impossible for slavery to exist. By the 
operation of the Jubilee more was done to prevent the oppression 
of the poor, than by all the human laws for that purpose ever 
enacted in the world. Any law enacted to protect natural liberty 
and rights, can never, while it is faithfully obeyed, be made to 
protect its moral opposites. * 

VIII. Another highly important fact resulting from the Jubilee 
is the restoration of Inheritances or Estates to the original owners 
or their heirs, on the arrival of each successive Jubilee, see Lev. 
XXV. 10, 13, 23, 24, 25, 34, 41 ; Num. xxxvi. 4, &c. This pro- 
vision was intended for the especial benefit of the poor, particu- 
larly for the benefit of poor Hebrew servants, without any regard 
to the pecuniary interest of their former masters. At the con- 
quest of the Land of Canaan, all the conquered territory was as 
equally divided among the Israelitish people as possible, see Num. 
xxvi. 52. 56, xxxiii. 54 ; Josh. xi. 23, xiv. 1, 5, &c., which division 
was by the institution of the Jubilee, like our policy or system of 
entailment, rendered perpetual to the posterity of the original 
owners. 

The conduct of those who quote the perverted passages which 
have been reviewed in favor of slavery, is certainly very remarka- 
ble — for they utterly refuse to allow any other part of the Leviti- 
cal law to regulate the condition of modern slaves, contrary to the 
well known legal rule which teaches, that all parts of the same 
code in relation to the same subject matter, ought in justice and 
according to custom in other cases, to be adopted and applied to 
its regulation, or else reject all. Thus they will allow of no 
statute for the voluntary escape of slaves, no year of Release, no 
Jubilee, no Restoration of property, no wages or other pay, nor 
any of the other Levitical rights and privileges to slaves, merely 
because such an allowance would spoil their whole theological 
slave-theory, and instantly destroy that beautiful system of Scrip- 
tural slave bondage and oppression, which they pretend God him- 
self established by those perverted statutes. It seems to me that 
they must have but little confidence in the wisdom of their Maker, 
thus to adopt only a small portion of His pretended law on the 
subject of slavery, and reject all the rest of it appertaining to the 
same subject. 

IX. Another most decisive fact is, that there is not only no 
account m the Scriptures of any kind of slavery in the Jewish 



62 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

nation, but there is no Jewish or other tradition of any such 
slavery. Every other ancient slaveholding nation has left distinct 
historical traditions of its slaveholding practice — it being just as 
impossible for a nation to forget the principal occurrences in its 
ovs^n history, as it is for an individual to forget those of his own 
life. If ever, therefore, the Jews had practised human slavery, 
even in violation of the Levilical law, they would have left an 
historical tradition of it, the same as the Greeks and Romans have 
of their history — while the entire absence of any such history is 
the strongest negative testimony that can exist, that the Jews never 
had any such practice or custom among them. Josephus relates 
no such custom, though the word "slave" is made to appear in 
the English translation of his history, which is most likely to be a 
false rendering, because the Hebrew language, which contains no 
such word, was his native tongue. That the Jews were sometimes 
guilty of great oppression and other sins against the Levitical law, 
is certain from the Scriptures themselves, see Isa. i. 11 — 15, xxix. 
13; Jer. xxii. 13—17; Matt. xv. 6, 9; Mark vii. 5, 9 ; Tit. i. 
14, &c. It appears to have been chiefly on account of this very 
sin that most of the Prophets were commissioned and sent to 
reprove them. But there is no evidence whatever that they 
carried these abominable perversions to the extent our modern 
Christians have, to the moral justification of actual slavery or pro- 
perty in man. 

X. Another fact is, that at the creation God gave to mankind 
alone, the dominion of ownership or property in the earth and its 
productions, see Gen. i. 26, 28, ix. 2; Ps. viii. 6, 8, &c. By 
virtue of this great statutory grant, one individual of the human 
race has just as good natural and divine right to the earth and its 
productions, as any other individual has, of which right every kind 
of monopoly is a direct infringement and breach of the moral law 
of God, and to the full and perfect enjoyment of which grant and 
right, it is necessary that each individual should be just as free 
as all the rest are. This statute strikes at the root of not only 
slavery, but of monopoly ; by rendering each a violation of the 
moral law. Thus does the first chapter in the Scriptures contain, 
by an implied but necessary divine guaranty, the grand charter 
of the civil liberties of all mankind — a charter violated by slave- 
holders, and other monopolists, and by oppressors every moment 
of their oppressive agency. God himself has thus forbidden all 



TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 



human monopoly by His own holy and perfect law. He never 
made a grant to one class of men of any other class, and the fact 
that he has not., taken in connection with the other grant, is alone 
proof certain and conclusive, that so far from ever having sanc- 
tioned the practice of human slavery, He utterly forbade the same 
by enactments, obedience to which rendered such slavery 
impossible. 

XI. Another equally decisive fact is, that human slavery is a 
direct violation of the eighth and tenth commandments, and an 
indirect but equally certain violation of the other commands con- 
tained in that great table. Slavery, as we have seen, is the highest 
kind of larceny condemned by the Levitical law, and is therefore 
the greatest possible violation of the eighth commandment. But 
as by the same law every human being is, under God, the sole 
owner of himself and all his just rights, faculties and acquisitions, 
the crime which usurps and robs him of them all is founded in 
covetousness, or in a greedy and criminal desire to possess that 
which belongs to another, or to others, and to which the slave- 
holder knows he has no moral or just right, and which is thus a 
direct violation of the tenth commandment. But human slavery 
is also an indirect but equally certain violation of the commands 
in the Decalogue, because its support and effects necessarily pro- 
duce such violations, as every reader will by a little reflection 
readily perceive. Now nothing could be more wickedly absurd 
than the supposition, that though the Almighty enacted these 
great commands in the Levitical law. He at the same time estab- 
lished an institution in the same law, the support of which He 
knew would produce the necessary and certain violation of the 
same commands, and within the wide sphere of its destructive 
influence, render the practical observance and operation of the 
whole of them impossible. 

Slavery produces the constant violation of the commands of 
the Decalogue. Thus, it compels the slaves to violate the first 
and second commands, by rendering their masters the objects of 
their slavish obedience and worship, and compelling them to obey 
their owners' will in every case, though that will be ever so 
hostile to that of God. It produces the violation of the third 
command, by the constant criminal temptation and wicked neces- 
sity in all concerned in, or suffering from it, to use the most 
profane language, and causes them otherwise lightly to treat 



i 



64 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

their Maker's commands. It teaches them also to violate 
the fourth command, by rendering it impossible for slaves 
to observe the Lord's day (the Christian's Sabbath), in the 
spirit of the command, and by otherwise inducing a general 
neglect and disregard in all slave societies to the ordinances to be 
attended to on that day ; of the fifth, by prohibiting slave children 
from honoring and obeying their own parents, they being obliged 
to substitute in place of filial obedience and parental authority, a 
slavish obedience and subjection to their masters only ; of the 
sixth, by constantly tempting and producing slave murders in 
every form and degree of barbarity, for the necessary support of 
slavery ; of the seventh, by prohibiting marriage to the slaves, and 
producing criminal concubinage and licentiousness among them, 
as well as the general compulsory prostitution of the female 
portion of the slaves, by reason of the arbitrary power which it 
confers on the masters and other oppressors ; and lastly, of the 
ninth, by its necessary tendency to produce the habit of falsehood 
and lying in both masters and slaves — in the former for the purpose 
of deceiving and abusing their slaves, in the latter to deceive their 
oppressors and avoid punishment for slave offences. It also pro- 
duces the same habit in others who are infected with the spirit of 
the sin of slavery and are enlisted in its support, as is well exem- 
plified by their constant employment of the various false pretences 
and objections raised by them against the abolition of slavery, and 
by the malignant falsehoods circulated by them against the friends 
of emancipation, and their measures, as well as against and respect- 
ing slaves ; and as all the other moral precepts in the Scriptures 
are but exemplifications and applications of those in the Deca- 
logue, slavery directly or indirectly produces the constant neces- 
sary violation of them all. 

XII. The last decisive fact I shall quote in this connection is, 
that human slavery is an indirect but certain violation of every 
moral precept contained in the Scriptures, because the support of 
it produces the necessary violation of every one of those precepts, 
a circumstance which proves its great criminality, and furnishes 
the principal reason why it was punished with death by the Leviti- 
cal law. In this way such slavery is discovered to violate the 
spirit or general intent of the Scriptures more extensively 
perhaps than any other crime except murder. It is impossible 
for any person to practise human slavery an hour without violat- 



TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS. 65 

ing the law of Love, the Golden Rule, and the numerous other 
similar precepts that abound in the Scriptures, as much so as if 
he practised murder and other crimes, as every one would 
acknowledge were he himself enslaved, and as the slightest critical 
reflection will demonstate. Thus it is impossible for any slave- 
holder or other person engaged in the support of slavery not to 
violate the precepts found in such passages as Lev. xix. 13 ; 
Deut. xxiv. 14, 15 j Mai. iii. 5 ; Mark x. 19 ; 1 Thes. iv. 6, 
&c. Nor is it possible for any slave fully to obey the precepts 
in Ex. XX. 16; Eph. v. 2—4, 22, 25, vi. 1, 4. Now for 
us to pretend that the Almighty would give us this multitude 
of precepts as rules of our moral conduct, and declare disobedience 
to any of them to be sinful, and at the same time establish and 
sanction an institution in the same law containing the precepts, 
the necessary effect of which he foreknew would produce the 
necessary violation of them all, and totally prevent their moral 
efficacy in this world, is an absurdity too gross and too wicked 
for a moment's innocent toleration. 

I might thus proceed to enumerate many other natural and 
Scriptural facts of less moral importance in the connection, but 
equally conclusive against the wicked pretence of Old Testament 
slavery, but the foregoing are abundantly sufficient for the present 
purpose. And against this overwhelming mass of circumstantial 
evidence, contradicting and disproving the pretence, what do its 
advocates produce 1 Nothing but a repetition of the few per- 
verted passages which have been reviewed, their pro-slavery con- 
struction of which has been proved to be false, as the same 
passages were intended for the promotion of liberty instead of 
slavery — the same repetition being always accompanied with a 
contemptuous and obstinate refusal, either critically to examine 
the merits of those passages by themselves, or to compare the 
passages with the context on the same subject matters, or with 
the general spirit of the Scriptures, in order to ascertain their 
true and genuine meaning. Such dishonesty as this is truly 
popish in its character, and never was, and never can be employed 
for anything but the justification of sin and crime, being always 
exhibited in cases where the true meaning of God's Word is the 
subject of controversy, the same conduct being a direct violation 
of the precepts contained in 1 Thes. v. 21, and other similar pas- 
sages, and severely censured and condemned in Matt. xv. 3, 



66 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

6, 9 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, and in a hundred other places, and can 
only be accounted for in the present case, from the absolute 
necessity of committing one great crime for the support of another, 
because sin can never in any case or under any circumstances be 
supported by any other than sinful means. 



CHAPTER XV. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

It is very generally contended by the advocates of human slavery 
that Christ and his apostles did not condemn the practice of such 
slavery, but, on the contrary, connived at, and acquiesced in, and 
thereby sanctioned that practice, though the same was nearly 
universal throughout the Roman empire during the whole period 
of their ministry. This pretended example of theirs is supposed 
to be a sufficient moral warrant for the pro-slavery conduct and 
example of our pro-slavery clergy and their pro-slavery followers. 
It is said if Christ and his true follov/ers sanctioned and supported 
human slavery, all Christians ought to sanction and support the 
practice also. But to this pro-slavery pretence, I reply, that 

Christ DID DIRECTLY AND EXPRESSLY CONDEMN THE PRACTICE OF 

HUMAN SLAVERY AS A GREAT SIN, and by the same name of man 
stealing, &c., too; in the same manner as the Old Testament did, 
as has been sufficiently explained. He did this by solemnly re-af- 
firming, ratifying, and confirming the Levitical or Moral law, which 
said law ^condemned human slavery by those names, as we have 
seen it did ; see Matt. v. 17, 18 ; Luke xvi. 17. Were a legisla- 
ture to adopt and ratify a whole code of laws at once, as has 
been the case, which said code condemned a particular act or 
practice as a crime or sin, it would just as directly and as posi- 
tively condemn the same act or practice as a crime or sin, as if it 
had originally draughted and enacted the special statute intended 
for that purpose. It is the weakest sophistry imaginable to pre- 
tend that Christ did not condemn human slavery directly, because 
he could not ratify and confirm the moral law without doing so. 



PRO-SLAVERV PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 67 

it would be just as absurd and false to pretend that Christ did not 
by such ratification and confirmation directly condemn murder, 
robbery, theft, and the other crimes specifically condemned in the 
moral law or Levitical code, as that he did not directly condemn 
manstealing or slavery by it. The apostles also pronounced the 
same condemnation by their similar ratification and confirmation of 
the moral law. See Rom. iii. 31, vii. 12, x. 4 ; Gal. iii. 24 ; 1st 
Tim. i. 8, and numerous other New Testament passages confirma- 
tory of the moral law. The whole public ministry of the apostles 
was based upon this doctrine, namely, — that the whole moral law 
was still in force, and would for ever remain in force ; and that as 
all mankind had violated that law, and would continue to violate 
it, they had no other means of salvation left but by faith in Christ 
and obedience to His laws. The whole scope and tenor of their 
writings so clearly and abundantly teach this doctrine that it 
cannot be honestly mistaken. After such repeated and explicit 
ratifications and confirmations of this great law, there was 
neither any necessity nor propriety in Christ and the apostles 
transcribing the whole of that law into their writings in order to 
show that they condemned each of the specific crimes enumerated 
in it, such a transcript being a work of mere supererogation or use- 
less task. Accordingly they never alluded to any of the specific 
sins condemned in and by the moral law for any other purpose 
than that of illustration, as in 1st Tim i. 10, and other passages. 
But even without such allusions, the mere ratification and con- 
firmation of the moral law by Christ and his apostles, was a direct 
and positive condemnation by them of every sin condemned in 
that law. The common pro-slavery pretence, therefore, that 
Christ and his apostles did not condemn human slavery, is a naked 
and obvious untruth. They did in various other ways indirectly 
condemn such slavery, as by their denunciations of oppression, and 
their views of covetousness, extortion, &c., but the foregoing is 
their direct and positive condemnation. 

So by way of indirect apology, we frequently hear it asserted 
that Christ and his apostles did not attack slavery at all, that they 
never preached against it, and from this assumption the pro-slavery 
inference is sagaciously drawn that they actually connived at and 
acquiesced in the practice, just as pro-slavery preachers and pro- 
fessors now do. But to this gratuitous supposition, or begging 
the question, I reply, that we do not now know against what par- 



68 



ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 



ticular sins Christ and his apostles preached the most ; for the 
New Testament is merely a general history and compilation of 
general doctrines, and not a volume of their religious discourses. 
Among the various sins, it specifically mentions murder, and man- 
stealing or slaver}', and condemns them both with equal severity, 
but it gives us but a small share of the preaching of Christ and his 
apostles, and none at all of their specific preaching against 
those two sins. According to this pretended negative testimony 
of the New Testament then, if Christ and his apostles connived at 
and approbated the practice of slavery, they connived at and ap- 
probated the practice of murder also. So according to the same 
mode of reasoning, as we have no account whatever that Christ 
and his apostles preached against piracy, arson, forgery, counter- 
feiting, &,c. ; they must have connived at and approbated the prac- 
tice of those crimes, and have thereby left us their Christian sanc- 
tion to practise the same, just us we are to practise murder and 
slavery ! Such are the necessary moral consequences of this 
kind of perversion. 

During the public ministry of Christ and his apostles, murder 
and slavery, and most other crimes condemned by the moral law, 
abounded in the Roman empire, and I infer that they preached 
just as faithfully against slavery as against murder and those other 
crimes, because they were all persecuted, and all but one put to 
death, on account of their preaching, which they hardly would 
have been had they, like many of our modern preachers and pro- 
fessors of religion, connived at and acquiesced in the customary 
practice of those most popular sins. Faithful Christian preaching 
always brought persecution upon itself. Had the apostles been 
unfaithful or treacherous to their cause by conniving at popular 
sins, they might have lived quietly, peaceably, and respectably, 
among Roman murderers, menstealers, idolators, &c., and been 
patronized, cherished, and esteemed by them just as our modern 
pro-slavery preachers now are by American slaveholders. So far 
as we have any account of their preaching in the New Testament, 
the presumption is, that Christ and his apostles faithfully preached 
against every form and degree of customary sin in their times, 
as Matthew xxiii., Luke xi., and other specimens testify, or 
in other words that they preached against all the sins condemn- 
ed by the moral law which they had ratified, and to this reasona- 
ble presumption there is no opposing testimony. We are no- 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 69 

where positively informed in the New Testament, or elsewhere, 
that the Apostles, in their ordinary verbal discourses, preached 
against the cruel heathen persecutions of themselves and other 
Christians, against offensive war, theatrical exhibitions, gladiatorial 
shows, human sacrifices, concubinage, heathen feasts, idol worship, 
the Olympic games, and a hundred other heathen abominations 
legalized and customarily prevalent in their times. But whoever 
supposes that they did not preach against all these abominations, 
or that they in any way winked at and approbated the practice 
of them, must, in my opinion, be entirely mistaken, because there 
is no probability that they were thus treacherous to the moral law 
which they had ratified, and because their fate proves they were 
not. Nor have we any more evidence or reason to believe that 
Christ and his apostles connived at and approbated the practice of 
slavery and its horrors, than that they connived at and approbated 
the practice of murder or the other heathen abominations here 
specified. As the perversions by means of which so many of our 
American Christians pacify their consciences were then unknown, 
no satisfactory reason can now be rendered why they should or 
might have been liable to do so. 

From some statements in the New Testament it would seem 
that the preaching of Christ and his Apostles must have been ex- 
tensive indeed ; see Matt. x. 17, xxviii. 19, 20 ; Luke ix. 2, 6 ; 
John xxi. 25 ; Acts i. 8, ix. 15, x. 42, xiii. 5, xvi. 10, xvii. 2, 17, 
xviii. 4, 25, xx. 20, 25—27 ; 1 Cor. xv. 10 ; 2 Cor. xi. 23, 28, 
&c. Thus we are informed in Acts xxviii. 30, 31, that Paul 
preached two years in one place at one time, yet we have scarcely 
any information in the New Testament, or in any other history, 
respecting the specific subjects of the voluminous public dis- 
courses of these great preachers. We have no specific information 
in the New Testament, or elsewhere, that they preached against 
slavery or any other criminal practice by its specific name. But as 
the same great Apostle has informed us, in Acts xx. 26, 27, that 
" he had not shunned to declare all the counsel of God," that " he 
was pure from the blood of all men," and as he, inEph. vi. 20, 21, 
and other passages, requested the prayers of the brethren for special 
grace to preach the gospel boldly, which he could not have done 
without faithfully preaching against slavery or man-stealing, 
we may confidently conclude that he and all the other apostolic 
preachers did so. 
6 



70 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE AKGUMENT. 

There is no probability that these devoted men neglected to 
preach anything they taught, or that they failed to preach against 
any crime condemned in their writings, not even slavery. Yet 
we are gravely informed by our pro-slavery preachers and their 
followers^ that we have no authority from the New Testament to 
preach against slavery, and thereby disturb the domestic scriptural 
relation of master and slave, and that we ought silently to acqui- 
esce in, and thus sanction the relation, just as Christ and his 
apostles must be supposed to have done. This is the kind of gos- 
pel extensively preached in this country at this time. It v/ill be 
a matter of amusement if not of profit, to test the correctness of 
this mode of preaching by its consequences. For instance, as 
nothing is said in the New Testament about any public preaching 
of Christ and his apostles against murder, we have no authority 
from the volume, according to this reasoning, to preach against 
murder, the same being thus licensed by that book ! In the same 
manner as nothing is said in that book about any public preaching 
of the apostles against arbitrary government, and despotic law, ana 
practice, we are to infer from these negative premises that the 
same apostles connived at, acquiesced in, and approbated the bar- 
barities of Nero, Caligula, Domitian, and the other heathen mon- 
sters who persecuted and murdered them and their brethren ! anti 
that this supposed connivance and assent of the apostles is to be 
construed as a moral justification of those barbarities, and moral 
license to similar atrocities in all after time ! On the same kind 
of premises we are also required to believe that John the Baptist 
and Christ both approbated the massacre of the infants by Herod, 
and that public massacres of all sorts are to be silently tolerated 
by Christians ! So that Protestants have no authority from the 
scriptures, and therefore no moral right whatever, to complain of 
their persecutions by the Catholics, which they ought to approbate 
and not condemn ; nor have the persecuted a right to complain of 
their persecutors under any circumstances! such persecutions 
being morally justified and sanctioned by the approving silence 
of Christ and his apostles ! 

Furthermore, as we have no account whatever of any public 
preaching by Christ and his Apostles against forgery, arson, piracy 
counterfeiting, and twenty other heinous ancient as well as modern 
crimes, we are to presume from this supposed approving silence 
and acquiescence of theirs, that the whole of those crimes are 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 71 

morally approbated and licensed in the New Testament, by the 
special example of Christ and his Apostles, so that we have no 
moral rijrht whatever to disturb others in the commission of 
them ! ! And lastly, as there is no account of any such preaching 
of Christ and his Apostles against human slavery, nor against the 
moral crimes necessary to support and preserve the practice, we 
are to presume that the whole of these crimes are morally appro- 
bated and licensed in the New Testament, by the approving 
silence and connivance of Christ and his Apostles, and were thus 
morally justified by the same example at all times and places 
thereafter ! I These few test specimens are abundantly sufficient 
to prove the falsity, absurdity, and futility of the nonsense that 
we have no authority in the New Testament, from the writings of 
Christ and his Apostles, for preaching and inveighing against the 
system of human slavery that exists in our land ; on the contrary, 
it is just as easy to prove that we have this authority from the New 
as we have from the Old Testament, for the latter is entirely 
ratified and confirmed by the former, as we have seen, and what- 
ever any part of both, or either of them, condemn and oppose, or 
ratify and approve, we all are morally bound to ratify and approve, 
or condemn and oppose, as the case may be, and that by public 
preaching, as well as in all other just and righteous modes, see 
Rom. XV. 4 ; 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17, &c. Nobody doubts the truth of 
this great moral duty in any other case except slavery. Nor does 
anybody doubt in any other case, the special obligation of the 
Christian pulpit to practise this duty, since the Scriptures plainly 
teach the special obligation of that agency to enforce every Chris- 
tian duty, and that with a degree of energy and perseverance pro 
portioned to the public neglect of each duty, as is best shown by 
special precept and the examples of the Holy Prophets and Apos- 
tles, who literally discharged this duty. When therefore we know 
that both the Old and New Testament condemn and oppose 
slavery, with the same severity as they do the worst of other 
crimes, as has been clearly shown in these passages, we also know 
from the same Scriptures, that it is our moral duty to condemn 
and oppose it with equal severity ourselves. 



72 ANTI-SLAVEKY BIBLE AEGUMENT. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

(Continued.) 

Examination of Matt. xx. 28, xxvi. 28 ; Acts xx. 28 ; Rom. vii. 14 ; I Cor. vi. 
20, vii. 23 ; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, 3 ; Rev. v. 9, &c. 

It has already been sufficiently explained, that the whole of these 
passages are typical or figurative descriptions of free and volun- 
tary service, copied from their Levitical types or figures of the 
ancient Hebrew servitudes, and are so far from being indicative 
of involuntary or slavish service, that they figuratively describe a 
"ransom," or a " purchase," or a "redemption," each meaning 
substantially the same effect or thing, from the slavish service or 
slavery of sin, to the free and voluntary service of righteousness. 
Every reader of the Scriptures understands the passages in this 
sense without a dissenting opinion or doubt, notwithstanding the 
employment in the descriptions of the words "buy," "sell," 
"purchase" and "redeem," &,c. The types or figures from 
which these descriptions are taken, are the same ancient Hebrew 
sales, purchases, ransoms, and redemptions of the ancient Hebrew 
and other oriental servants, wives, children, wards, brethren, and 
other relations, so often mentioned in the Pentateuch and other 
parts of the Old Testament, as in Gen. xvii. 12, 13, &c.; Ex. xxi. 
2, &c., XXX. 12—16 ; Lev. v. 6—19, xxv. 48, 49 ; Num. xxxi. 
50 5 Deut. xvi. 12, &c.,' Ruth iv. 10, &c.; transactions frequently 
alluded to for the purpose of illustration in other parts of the Old 
Testament, see Job. xxxiii. 21, xxxvi. 18 ; Ps. xlix. 7, 8, &c. 
We know that these ancient customary transactions were the 
types or figures from which the New Testament passages now 
under review were taken, not only because no other ancient types 
of the kind are to be found, and because all the formative descrip- 
tions in the New Testament of free and voluntary service are 
copied from the Levitical types, in the Old Testament, but also 
from direct allusions to these types in various other parts of the 
New Testament, see Gal. iv. 1 — 5, v. 1 ; Heb. ix. 9, x. 1, 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 73 

4, &c. No one ever thinks of doubting the truth of these 
figurative allusions in favor of anything else but human slavery. 
But, as has been already remarked, since these New Testament 
descriptions are of free and voluntary service only, the types or 
figures from which they were taken must have been of similar free 
service, because a free description cannot be taken from a slavish 
type. It is impossible therefore that any of the Old Testament 
purchases and sales of human beings should have been of a slavish 
nature, unless, as in the case of the sale of Joseph by his brethren, 
the subject matter and the general description together both com- 
bine to show clearly that such was the fact. For these reasons it 
is perfectly clear from the whole tenor of the Scriptures, that 
none of the ancient Hebrew servants were any more sold into 
involuntary service or slavery, than Christian converts were as 
such ever reduced to that condition by their Christian conversion 
— both kinds of these servitudes being perfectly free and vol- 
untary. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

(^Continued.) 

Examination of Matt, xviii. 23, 25, xxii. 27 ; Rora. xiii. 1—7 ; Titus iii. 1 > 
1 Pet. ii. 13. 

It is impossible that the case recorded in Matt, xviii. 23, 25, 
should have been a slave sale or even a figurative description of 
one, because it appears from the 21<th verse of the same chapter 
that the servant spoken of " owed''' his master, which was impossi- 
ble if he were a slave, because by the laws of human slavery, both 
ancient and modern, a slave could no more owe his master, than 
a beast or other article of property could. By the law of God, 
by the common law, and by every other just code of laws in the 
world, every slaveholder justly owes his slave, and not the latter 
him, a doctrine from which the Abolitionists contend that com- 
pensation on emancipation is morally and justly due to the slaves 
alone, and to nobody else, and that from their former masters or 



74 ANTI-SLAVEEY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

oppressors only. The parable recorded in the passage under con- 
sideration, is an allusion to the sales of insolvent debtors under 
the harsh and oppressive heathen laws of the Roman Empire, the 
same being in no way similar to any voluntary sales of persons 
approved in the Old Testament, and was used in this New Testa- 
ment passage to illustrate the doctrine the Saviour was then incul- 
cating. 

Both the letter and spirit of Matt. xxii. 21 ; Rom. xiii. 1 — 7 ; 
Titus iii. 1 ; 1 Pet. ii. 13, and similar passages, are for the sake of 
human slavery most grossly perverted by the advocates of such 
slavery, to teach a silent acquiescence in, and contented submission 
to the practice of all such public sins as are legalized by wicked 
human governments. From .the doctrine promulgated in Rom. 
xiii. 1 — 7, and many corresponding passages, it is certain that 
human governments of every name and form are of divine appoint- 
ment and authority, and are to be respected and obeyed as such. 
But such governments and their abuses being moral and political 
opposites, the doctrine gives no moral license, and imposes no 
moral duty whatever, to respect and support the abuses, the per- 
versions, and the corruptions of such governments, for the admin- 
istration of the latter must be morally righteous and good, to 
warrant the voluntary support of them as a moral duty in any 
case whatever, because we are directed to avoid all sin and the 
support of all sinful agents and agencies. Not that the Scriptures 
do not make a just distinction between forms of human govern- 
ment, because they plainly teach a preference of the republican 
form over all others. But they also teach, that God will own and 
bless any other form of government that is righteously and wisely 
administered, and also, that He will disown and curse any form, 
even the republican, that is perverted and abused to be the shield 
and protector of public sins — and as the same Scriptures also 
teach, that as far as we are capable, we are morally bound to 
imitate God as the first and greatest rule of moral duty, so we are 
morally bound to oppose all governmental abuses and corruptions 
whatever, without regard to modes and forms. 

The whole of this Scriptural teaching exactly corresponds with 
the great Law of Nature, because our own common sense teaches 
us that one form or mode of government is no better than another, 
except as it is less liable to abuse. But the advocates of human 
slavery contend in its behalf, that we are morally bound by the 



PRO-SLAVERY PEEVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 75 

instructions of the passages under consideration, voluntarily to 
support all the errors, abuses, perversions and corruptions of human 
governments, legalized human slavery among the rest, and never 
attempt to use even moral means to counteract and destroy, or 
reform it. * 

But this kind of sophistry must be very difficult to support by 
argument, for on the supposition that it is true doctrine, Christ 
and his Apostles and disciples were morally bound to justify and 
support their own persecutors, instead of blaming and condemning 
them as they did, because all the persecutions they suffered were 
legalized by human governments. This slavish doctrine must be 
heretical in every respect. Thus, human life and faculties, as 
well as human governments, are also of divine appointment and 
authority, and we are directed in the Scriptures to preserve and 
support and employ them properly, but it must be highly sinful 
in us to justify and support their abuses, because the latter are 
highly sinfuL 

Besides, we-are directly and repeatedly taught in the Scriptures, 
both by precept and example, that where the laws and customs of 
men conflict with the law of God, we are morally bound to obey 
the latter, though the consequences be a necessary violation of 
the former, see Ex. xxiii. 2 ; Acts iv. 19, v. 29, and numerous 
corroborative passages ; a doctrine fully illustrated and confirmed 
by the voluntary and consistent example of all the Bible preacherfj 
the whole of whom were persecuted and most of them put to 
death, for their voluntary violation of wicked human laws and 
customs. Nothing can be morally and politically more reasonable 
than this conduct, or in other words more agreeable to the Law 
of Nature, because, though human governments are divinely 
authorized, yet their abuses and corruptions are not, and are there- 
fore entitled to no voluntary respect and support. It is remarkable 
that in the passages now under consideration we are commanded 
not to obey human governments and laws^ but to submit to, or be 
subject to them, and that for the Lord's sake and not theirs. If 
therefore we violate wicked human laws, but voluntarily and peace- 
ably submit to' their penalties inflicted for the violation, we as trul)'' 
remain subject or submissive to them, as if we obeyed their 
requirements. From these plain premises it clearly appears, that 
the subjection inculcated in Eom. xiii. 1 — 7, &c., really means, 
voluntary obedience to all human laws and customs that are 



76 



ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT, 



morally good, and voluntary submission to the penalties prescribed 
for the violation of all those that are morally bad, see Daniel iii. 
6, &c. This reasonable construction harmonizes with the entire 
teaching of the Scriptures on the subject, which the opposite pro- 
slavery construction entirely desfroys. It is a doctrine of the 
Scriptures too plain to be innocently misunderstood, that wherever 
we find the laws and customs of men conflict with the law of 
God, we are morally bound to violate the former in obedience to 
the latter. Others carry the perversion still further, and maintain 
that because we are morally bound peaceably to submit to these 
wicked penalties, at least unless we can peaceably avoid their 
infliction, and because we have no moral right to resist their inflic- 
tion by physical force, therefore the wickedest human govern- 
ments have a moral or divine right to legalize and enforce those 
penalties. But this pretence must also be a rank and dangerous 
heresy, because, if it be true doctrine, where is the moral guilt 
of legalized persecution for righteousness' sake, so severely con- 
demned in the Scriptures 1 Why condemn such persecution at 
all, if wicked human governments have a moral right to inflict it 7 
Besides, though the wicked relations of men are never regulated, 
but always condemned in the Scriptures, yet the behavior of 
innocent persons wrongfully subjected to them frequently is regu- 
lated, both by precept and example, see Ex. xxiii. 4 ; Prov. xx. 
22, xxiv. 29 ; Matt. v. 39—44 ; Rom. xii. 17, 20, &c., and yet, 
so far from any license being granted in these passages to inflict 
the wrongs submitted to, we are assured in the same passages that 
God himself will avenge or punish them. Patient submission to 
oppression and other evil treatment is, according to the same and 
numerous corresponding passages, a moral duty which the 
oppressed and persecuted owe to God, and not to their oppressors, 
who persecute and oppress them. Were the doctrine otherwise, 
all who persecute and abuse their fellow-men " for righteousness 
sake" are, contrary to the plain teaching of the Scriptures, mor- 
ally justified in such wickedness, so that even those who perse- 
cuted and put to death the Prophets, Apostles and martyrs, dis- 
charged none but their moral duty in so doing, and deserve praise 
instead of censure for such meritorious deeds ! 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 77 



CHAPTER XVIll. 

PRO SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

(^Continued.) 

Examination of Eph. vi. 5—9 ; Col. iii. 22—25, iv. 1 ; Titus ii. 9, 10 ; 1 Tim. 
vi. 1; 1 Pet. ii. 18—20. 

The Greek words used in these passages for servants are douloi, plu- 
ral o{doulos, and oikeiai, plural oioiketes, and for " masters," kurioi, 
plural of kurios, and despotai, plural of despotes — each couplet hav- 
ing apparently little or no distinction of meaning. Like our English 
word " servants," the two former never mean " slaves," whose tech- 
nical Greek name as we have seen is andrapoda, unless the context 
and subject-matter show that fact — nor do the two latter ever mean 
" slaveholders," whose technical Greek word is andrapodistai, ex- 
cept where the same evidence proves that meaning. Thus the Apos- 
tles were not property or slaves in any sense, though each of them 
styled himself a " servant''' (doulos) of Jesus Christ his " master''' 
(kurios) who certainly was not a slaveholder in any sense, see 
Luke ii. 29 ; Acts ii. 18 ; Rom. i. 1 ; Phil. i. 1 ; Titus i. 1 ; James 
i. 1 ; 2 Pet. i. 1, &c., nor are those words ever used in the New 
Testament, in connection with any slavish regulations or direc- 
tions. On the contrary, though the best directions are given in 
that volume for the good regulation of the ordinary free relation 
of master arid servant^ it cannot be possible they were intended to 
regulate the relation of master and slave, for if obeyed they would 
be sure to destroy the latter relation itself, contrary to the intent 
of all such regulations, which are always provided for their sup- 
port and not their injury. Thus the simple direction given in 
Eph. vi. 9 ; Col. iv. 1 ; Philemon, 16th verse, would, if literally 
obeyed by all slaveholders, put a final and total end to their 
slaveholding rights and authority in a single day. Now we cannot 
honestly and innocently believe or suppose, that God would pro- 
vide regulations for the intended support and benefit of any rela- 
tion whatever, which He foreknew would if obeyed certainly 
overthrow and destroy it ! ! It must be highly wicked to imagine 



78 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGTTMEXT. 

God capable of such folly. It is possible that the directions con- 
tained in Eph. vi. 5 — 8, were intended to apply to the cases of 
all servants alike, to that of slaves among the rest, because, accord- 
ing to the spirit of Matt. v. 39 — 4"1<; Rom. xii. 17, 20, &c., it is 
the moral duty of slaves and other oppressed persons who cannot 
peaceably avoid their unhappy condition, patiently to submit to 
their hard fate, leaving the punishment of their oppressors to God, 
who will be sure to inflict it, because he has promised to do so. 

But we should remember that these directions are accompanied 
by others to the masters, which if obeyed will be sure to termi- 
nate the relation, so that the whole directions taken together must 
have been intended to destroy slavery, because their joint effect 
is entirely antagonistical and hostile to the practice. The same 
passages also teach us, that whenever we address slaves on the 
subject of their moral duty in that condition, we should also 
address the masters on their moral duty in relation to their slaves, 
which according to the spirit of the passages, as well as that of 
the whole Scriptures, clearly is, to treat their slaves in all respects 
as freemen or free and voluntary servants, by allowing and respect- 
ing all their natural rights, which will of course terminate their 
enslavement. It is remarkable also that the duties of servants 
inculcated in the passages under consideration, are represented in 
them as due to God and not to man, from which circumstance I 
strongly suspect their directions were intended for slaves, more than 
for any other class of servants, especially as Asia Minor, in which 
Ephesus was situated, abounded in slaves. Similar directions, 
and for similar reasons, are also given to all classes of servants and 
masters in Col. iii. 22, 25, iv. 1 ; Colosse being also a city of 
Asia Minor. Similar remarks are also in all respects applicable 
to the directions contained in Titus ii. 9, 10 ; 1 Pet. ii. 18 — 20, 
perfect obedience to which is sure instantly to destroy the prac- 
tice of slavery, which effect was doubtless one of their principal 
objects. It is certainly very remarkable, that the principal, if 
Hot the only motive from which servants of all classes are required 
to act, is obedience to the will of God, and a desire that his name 
amd religion might receive honor and credit, in which motive 
slaves as well as others ought to participate, though they owe no 
moral duty of slavish service on account of their masters or 
owners. 
I have no doubt whatever that the "servants under the yoke," 



PRO-SLAVEKY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 79 

addressed in 1st Tim. vi. 1, 2, were real slaves, because the Roman 
ceremony of passing prisoners of war under the yoke, was used in 
token of their conversion into property or slaves, whence the 
figurative phrase " under the yoke" denoted their condition as 
such. As this was a pure heathen custom there could have been 
no intention to approbate it in this passage, though the latter is 
otherwise worthy of very critical attention. 

We observe from the language of the passage, that these servants 
or slaves were directed to honor their heathen masters, not from 
any regard to the latter as deserving such respect, but from a 
much higher and more important motive, namely, — " that the 
name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed," or in other 
words, that profane cursing, and swearing, and hatred of others, 
might be avoided, the same being the violation of the Third Com- 
mandment, most common among discontented slaves as well as 
among their idle and dissipated masters, especially when irritated. 
This passage was intended to regulate the behavior of servants, 
indeed, as the directions in Matt. v. 39 — 44 ; Rom. xii. 14, 19 — 
21, &c., were that of oppressed persons in general, but it furnished 
no more moral justification or license to slavery, than these latter 
passages did to religious or other persecution for righteousness 
sake — a distinction readily understood in every other case except 
that of slavery. As additional evidence that the apostle had no 
design to regulate the practice of human slavery by these direc- 
tions it is very remarkable that he gave no directions to masters 
at all in the passage, no doubt, for one very sufficient reason, 
that they held a sinful relation to their slaves which he had no 
moral right to countenance, which he could hardly fail to do by 
addressing them after such directions to their slaves. Thus, this 
and the preceding passages, which have been reviewed in this 
chapter, instead of being pro-slavery as so many contend, are 
directly the reverse, because they have the strongest anti-slavery 
tendency and effect. 

From the phraseology " believing masters," which occurs in the 
passage last criticised, it has been sagaciously Inferred in behalf 
of slavery, that Paul fellowshipped slaveholders, not only as 
Christian brethren, but as members of the Christian church, and 
thus morally countenanced the practice of human slavery. There 
is no doubt that some slaveholders, as well as other heathen, were 
converted by the preaching of this apostle, and remained such 



80 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

until they became convinced of the sinfulness of their slavehold- 
ing relations, but there is no evidence in this passage, or anywhere 
else, that Paul or the other apostles ever received them into 
church membership, before they discovered the sinfulness of 
slavery and renounced the practice of it. We see from his Epis- 
tles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and others, that the great apostle 
to the gentiles had an immense deal of trouble with his new 
heathen converts, to wean them from the wicked heathen prac- 
tices to which they have been so long customarily addicted, but 
we have no evidence that he admitted them to Christian church 
membership till they renounced those practices ; while from 
the well known historical fact, that the early progress of 
Christianity destroyed the practice of human slavery, wherever 
the Christian doctrines were preached in their purity, the 
strong presumption is that he did not. There is no probability 
that the apostles fellowshipped persons as church members, 
who lived in the customary practice of sins and crimes con- 
demned in their epistles, because we see from such passages 
diS 2 Cor. vi. 14, 17, &c., that they excommunicated such 
persons and directed the other church members to shun their 
company. Why should they receive persons into church mem- 
bership beforehand, whom they were sure, or almost sure, to ex- 
communicate afterwards ? We see from the principal passage, 
that there was great danger that the converted slaves would 
despise the converted owners, and whyl Because the latter 
were a disgrace to the new religion they professed to have been 
converted to, and why ? Because, although they had been 
converted to the true religion, they remained in the practice of 
a great sin utterly condemned by that religion, to the great dis- 
grace of the latter, as well as injustice and injury to the slaves. 
Under such circumstances, nothing could be more necessary and 
proper than the directions of the apostles to these slaves, in 
order to prevent them as well as their masters disgracing the same 
holy religion. For these reasons I would just as soon believe that 
the same apostle, who, in 1 Tim. i. 9, 10, condemned slaveholders 
■with the same moral severity he did the worst of other criminals, 
admitted the latter to church membership while living in the cus- 
tomary practice of their former sins, as that he admitted slavehold- 
ers to the same privilege while living in the practice of slavery v 
I would just as soon believe that this apostle continued a perse- 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 81 

cutor after his own conversion, as to believe in this pro-slavery 
pretence. It is certain that Paul had a great deal of difficulty, 
sorrow, and trouble, with his new converts from heathenism, on 
account of their idolatrous and other evil heathen habits, but he 
never, knowingly, admitted any of them to church fellowship and 
Christian communion until they had renounced those habits. The 
reception of new converts to church privileges is predicated in the 
New Testament on the entire change in their former evil senti- 
ments and practices, testified to by their voluntary obedience to 
the commands of Christ, and manifestation of good works, as 
evidence of their genuine conversion, as is clear from such pas- 
sages as Matt. iii. 8, 10, viii. 16, 20, xii, 33 ; John v. 29 ; Rom. ii. 
6; 1 Cor. v. 1, 5, 9; 2 Cor. v. 10; Col. iii. 5— 9; 1 John 
iii. 18, &c. The apostles being at all times under the immediate 
guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit of God, could never 
have knowingly violated the plain rule in their church organiza- 
tion, government, and discipline. 

It is possible, though not at all probable, that the " believing 
masters" spoken of in this passage, had actually abandoned the 
practice of slavery. But whether they had or had not, the phrase 
is used in the sense of similar phraseology, so often occurring in 
common modern practice, of giving epithets to persons which 
have characterized their former lives, though radical changes have 
taken place in their characters and behavior. Thus the phrase 
" believing /cm?," " converted Infidel,'''' " reformed (/rwwA;arc/," &c., 
similar to the customary scriptural expressions, " the blind see," 
" the deaf Aear," " the lame walk,'''' &c., are nothing but nonsense if 
they be understood as literally true, just as the foregoing phrases 
must be on the same understanding, because nobody supposes that 
converted infidels and reformed drunkards retain the vicious prac- 
tices they have been converted and reformed from. In like man- 
ner, it is unreasonable as veil as unscriptural to suppose that 
" believing" or converted slaveholders in the apostles' time, con- 
tinued in the practice of slavery after they discovered the sinful- 
ness of it, though it is highly probable that many of them did 
before they made that important discovery. 



82 



ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

(^Continued.) 

Examination of the Epistle to Philemon. 

Great reliance is placed by the advocates of human slavery on 
Paul's epistle to Philemon, as furnishing supposed evidence that 
the latter was a real slaveholder, and at the same time a member 
of the Christian church by the perm.ission of the apostle himself. 
From these assumed premises they argue that the practice of human 
slavery cannot be a sin in itself, for if it were, the apostle would 
not have admitted Philemon to church membership. They also 
argue from the same premises, that the conduct of the Apostle in 
this case is a sufficient moral warrant for the forcible seizure and 
restoration of fugitive slaves. On account of the confidence 
with which these pro-slavery pretences are advanced, the whole 
of this short epistle deserves a very attentiv"e and critical con- 
sideration. 

A slight examination of the epistle assures us that Philemon 
was a member of the Christian church, but there is not a particio 
of evidence in it to prove that he was a slaveholder, but the re- 
verse, as I shall soon show. Nor is there any evidence that Oije- 
simus was a slave, but the reverse. The too common pro-slavery 
assumption that they respectively were such, is therefore a mero 
begging of the question ; and that not only without, but again ' 
the evidence furnished by the same epistle. 

I have already remarked, that as the Greek words " douloj ' 
and " oiketes'''' literally mean " servants," we have no means ojt 
determining whether the persons designated in the New Testa- 
ment by these words were free servants or slaves, except by Iha 
subject matter, by the context, and by the general description ici 
the whole narrative. In this short epistle Onesimus is in the Ititii 
verse called a " doulos'^ or man-servant simply, while in the pcsl- 



PRO-SLAVERY PERVERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. S3 

script at the end of the epistle, which is supposed to have been 
the ancient superscription or direction to it, he is called an 
" oiketes,''^ or house, or domestic servant, nothing more being in- 
dicated by either word to show the special nature of his servitude 
or service, to ascertain which, with any degree of reasonable proba- 
bility, we are compelled to resort to the subject matter contained 
in the context, or rather to the whole epistle, which, so far as it 
goes, is clearly indicative, or descriptive, not of slavish, but of free 
service, and leaves no reasonable doubt of the fact that Onesimus 
was a free and voluntary servant of some kind. Some conjecture 
from the expression, " in the flesh," used in the same 16th verse, 
that Onesimus was a natural brother of Philemon, in which case 
there is no probability that the former was a slave, as the 
practice of enslaving such near relations was not as common 
among the ancient heathen as it now is among modern Christians. 
From the general description in the epistle there is no doubt 
but that he had quitted his master Philemon's service without 
leave, and had unjustly injured the latter, and done wrong 
thereby, which he could not have done if he were a slave, because 
it is next to impossible for a slave unjustly to injure his owner 
by quitting his service. All the real injustice is on the side of 
the master by retaining the slave in bondage, and none at all on 
the part of the slave in escaping from the same bondage in Vv'hich 
he is held contrary to justice. Nor is it credible if Onesimus 
were a slave, that the Apostle should have blamed him for obey- 
ing the Levitical statute contained in Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, " Thou 
shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which has escaped 
from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even amonsr 
you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, 
where it liketh him best, thou shalt not oppress him." See also 
1 Cor. vii. 21, 23, where the same Apostle directed slaves to 
regain their liberty if they peaceably could. Ought we for a mo- 
ment to believe that the Apostle who gave such directions, would 
have voluntarily assisted in restoring Onesimus to the same 
unhappy condition he had just escaped from ; for this great Apostle 
not only acted consistently with his own teaching, but no man 
ever lived who knew better than he did both the natural and 
revealed injustice and criminality of slavery, or who did less to 
favor and support it 1 Besides, we see from the 18th and 19th 
verses of the epistle, that Onesimus could "owe" Philemon, 



84" ANTI-SLAVERT BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

which was impossible if he were a slave, but not only possible 
but very probable, if he were a free servant. There is not the 
slightest probability that the same Apostle, who, in 1 Tim. i. 9, 10, 
had characterized slavery as a crime equal to the worst kind of 
crimes, would have supposed Onesimus had done anything wrong 
in escaping from it, or would have advised him to return to it 
again. Fugitive slaves, when retaken and restored to their owners, 
were generally subjected to torture and other abuse in ancient as 
well as in modern times, a fate Paul would have been the last 
man in the world to assist in producing, especially on one of his 
own converts. As no man ever understood the Levitical law 
better than he did, and as he reverenced that law, he never would 
have violated the statute in Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. The whole 
course of conduct pursued by the Apostle in the case is entirely 
inconsistent and incredible, on the supposition that Onesimus was 
a slave, but entirely consistent and credible, because morally 
right and proper, on the contrary supposition that Onesimus was a 
free servant. What a wicked notion is that contended for by 
so many pro-slavery people, that the author of Romans xii. 
employed himself in enticing back and restoring fugitive slaves ! 
Yet the conduct of the Apostle in this case is held up and 
quoted even by Christian Preachers, and professors of religion, as 
the moral model and justificatory example of all the slaveholders 
and slave-catchers in the world ! 

From the foregoing facts, taken in connection with the whole 
spirit and tenor of the epistle, there is not the slightest probability 
that Onesimus was a slave, or that Philemon was a slaveholder. 
The supposition that either were such is a libel on the Christian 
office and character of the Apostle Paul, and a wicked imputation 
on the special grace which gave him that office and character, see 
Acts xxii. 4, 5, 14 ; Gal. i. 13—16, &c. 

From Paul's history and writings we have no more reason to 
believe that after his conversion he engaged in the practice of 
theft and other crimes than that he engaged in the fraudulent 
enticement or forcible seizure and restoration of fugitive slaves, 
the only effectual means ever employed to return such fugitives. 
Being as the Apostle to the Gentiles the greatest preacher of the 
only true religion in the world, he would never have countenanced 
any kind of heathen customs such as slavery, and all its incidents 
clearly are. For these reasons I do not know of a more absurd 



CONCLUSION — REFLECTIONS. 85 

and wicked perversion of the Scriptures than that which repre- 
sents the Apostles and their converts to a religion which is " first 
pure, then peaceable, gentle," &c. (James iii. 17), as engaged in 
the business of enticing, defrauding, seizing and sending back 
innocent, heart-broken slaves, to their masters who were like our 
slaveholders. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CONCLUSION REFLECTIONS. 

The pro-slavery scriptural perversions, which have now been 
exposed and refuted, are all that are worthy of special notice. 
They constitute the principal " refuge of lies" by which modern 
slavery has been morally justified among Christians j and now that 
they are effectually exploded, it is earnestly hoped and expected 
that the final overthrow of the system will be speedy and complete. 
These perversions have been the principal fortress of Christian sla- 
very in modern times, the destruction of which will be a sure prelude 
to the fall of its idol. It will be comparatively easy to refute other 
pro-slavery pretences, because they all morally depend on the great 
perversions now destroyed. Well do the Scriptures represent such 
perversions, as among the greatest sins, not only on account of their 
wicked nature, but on account of their tremendous necessary ten- 
dency to destroy public and private happiness, which tendency was 
never more powerfully exemplified by anything than by the pro- 
gress of modern Christian slavery. Chiefly on the credit and by 
the influence of these perversions, millions of human beings have 
been customarily robbed of their rights, their liberties, their hap- 
piness, and their lives, merely to gratify and pamper the wicked 
lusts of others, who have also been customarily corrupted and 
destroyed, by the same wicked gratifications, and thus more misery 
and destruction inflicted on mankind by these, than by any other 
wicked causes. From such awful consequences, more perhaps 
than by anything else, we can easily discover and realize the 
dreadful enormity of the sin of scriptural perversion. As has 

been already remarked, these perversions were entirely of Catholic 

7 



86 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

origin, though afterwards copied and adopted by all classes of 
Protestants, as sound theological doctrine — which conduct, if it do 
not prove the Protestant churches lo be the " Harlot" spoken of in 
Rev. xvii. 5, furnishes no proof that the Catholic church is the 
" Mother" mentioned in the same passage. The same perver- 
sions have produced a slaveholding priesthood and people, all 
over Christendom, and laid the foundation of slavery and oppres- 
sion everywhere. They have produced a slaveholding Chris- 
tianity, the propagation of which has been visibly followed by 
the displeasure of God, in every part of the world where the 
Christian religion now prevails — the same and similar perversions 
being also customarily employed, to justify the aristocratic oppres- 
sion, the luxury, the lewdness, the duelling, the wars, and many 
other public vices so customarily prevalent in all Christian coun- 
tries. Nor do these terrible effects stop here. It is in vain to 
preach this pro-slavery religion to the heathen, who will not 
receive it, as indeed they ought not — for such religion not only 
morally justifies slavery itself, but also all other crimes necessary 
to support it, and must therefore, in the opinion of every intelli- 
gent heathen, be as false at least as his own religion j and operating 
thus to the special injury of the heathen by enslaving them, they 
will reject it with abhorrence and disdain. A religion so per- 
verted, and falsified, and discredited, ought not to prevail, for all 
perversions of the true religion render it a false one, and a false 
religion is worse than none at all. Such fatal consequences show 
the extreme necessity of works like this, the design of which is to 
overthrow and destroy such destructive perversions. 

Next to perversions, the most fatal mistake ever made in the 
science of the true theology, is the doctrine of neglecting and 
rejecting a part of the law of God in practice — for according to 
the precepts of that law, as revealed in the Pentateuch and ratified 
in the New Testament, it was designed to be universal, and to 
oblige every human being to obey the whole of it, see Gen. i. 26, 
28, xii. 3, xxii. 18, xxvi. 3 — 5, xxviii. M ; Deut. xxvii. 26, 
xxviii. 1, 15 5 Jer. xi. 3, 4j Eze. xviii. 21; Matt. v. 17, 19; 
Rom. iii. 20, 21, 23 ; James ii. 10, &c., &c. These and numerous 
similar passages prove, that the promises made to Abraham 
extended to all mankind ; that the moral law given to his 
posterity, was given to all ; that it was to remain in force until the 
whole of it was fulfilled ; that all mankind were bound to obey 



CONCLUSION REFLECTIONS. 87 

the whole and every part of it, and that all had violated it and 
needed a Saviour. Now this law, as revealed in the Pentateuch, 
consists of three distinct parts : 

1. The typical, figurative or ceremonial ; 

2. The religious or moral ; 

3. The practical or civil. 

Of these three parts, the first only is fulfilled, by the advent and 
death of Christ, while none of the parts are repealed. The whole 
of this law is still in force, the political portion as well as the rest, 
and it is from want of conformity to it alone, that there is so much 
destruction and misery in the world. All the human laws in the 
world, which do not conform to this law, are morally null and void 
as wicked laws. But as no human code does thus conform, but 
has greatly deviated from God's law, all human codes are in many 
respects morally void, and it is a great sin thus to obey them. 
And so strict are the requirements of this great law, that the least 
deviation from it is held to be equivalent to a violation of the 
whole ! What then are we to think of most human codes, as well 
as human actions 1 

To preserve obedience, and prevent disobedience to this great 
law, the true church is the great worldly agent appointed by 
God himself, see Matt. v. 13, 16, &c. From the various descrip- 
tions given of it in the Scriptures, we find, that by its own consti- 
tution it embodies the elements of all reformatory agencies, being 
of itself a Bible, Tract, Missionary, Temperance, Anti-Slavery, 
and Moral Reform Society, and is intended to perform all the func- 
tions of these agencies. But the very necessity of them, separate 
from the church, proves the melancholy fact, that the latter, 
instead of taking the lead, is following in the track of moral 
reform ! ! The pulpit is the place specially appointed by God, 
from which to attack slavery and other public vices, but it is not 
used for that purpose, because it has become corrupted by them. 
Wo to true moral reform, when the moral salt of the earth has 
lost its savor ! Had the Christian church always done its duty 
in relation to public vices of every description, they would 
have been continually checked and destroyed, and the world kept 
in comparative peace and happiness. M^uch is said in the Scrip- 
tures about false prophets and false priests, who are represented 
and condemned as among the greatest of sinners, because their 
agency is more corrupt and corrupting than any other, see Neh. 



»0 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE ARGUMENT. 

ix. 34; Jer. ii. 8, v. 31, xxxii. 32; Lam. iv. 13; Eze. xxii. 
25 — 28 ; Matt. xxiv. 24 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1, &c. From the numerous 
passages of this kind occurring chiefly in the true Prophets, we 
find false priests uniformly described, as those who either neglect 
to teach the whole moral law, or else teach it falsely by perver- 
sions, and thus lead the people astray into customary sins, a descrip- 
tion which ought to make most, if not all our Christian Preach- 
ers and teachers tremble — for which of them pretend to teach the 
whole moral law to their hearers 1 Some are unable for want of 
knowledge, but those who are able know the attempt would ruin 
their popularity at this corrupt period, and hence they either 
neglect or pervert a large part of the moral law to please their 
corrupt hearers. How then can they say with Paul (Acts xx. 26, 
27), " I am pure from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned 
to declare unto you all the counsel of God." 

If any portion of the Christian priesthood are now so ignorant, 
as honestly to believe in the perversions, which have here been 
exposed and refuted, they are " blind leaders of the blind," and 
ought to be silenced for incompetency as well as heresy. But 
on the other hand those of them who understand these perver- 
sions, but will not faithfully expose, and refute, and bear their 
official testimony against them, are even worse than the other 
class, being by exact description the " dumb" and " greedy dogs'' 
alluded to in Isa. Ivi. 10, 11, and the false priests and teachers 
mentioned in other passages, who for the sake of worldly popu- 
larity, ease, wealth, favor and patronage, wilfully neglect their 
plain official duty in this respect ; and they ought for that reason also 
to be silenced. The religious services of these men must be worse 
than useless, because, if the very prayers and other religious ser- 
vices of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord (see Prov. xv. 
8, xxviii. 9 ; Isa. i. 11 — 15, &c.), all such services and other 
religious exertions of those who believe in Scriptural slavery, or 
who pretend to, while they do not, and who justify human slavery 
on that ground, must be most heinously sinful, and only increase 
the moral guilt of those who practise them, without any just 
reason to expect the divine favor and blessing, but the reverse . 
In this terrible censure, I include Protestants equally with 
Catholics, because they are equally guilty in the propagation 
of these wicked perversions, and of the slaveholding practices 
consequent upon them. So far as I have been able to ascertain 



CONCLUSION REFLECTIONS. 89 

there is no essential difference in the amount of pro-slavery cor- 
ruption, existing in each of these great divisions of the so called 
Christian church. 

Human slavery, like most other public and customary sins, is 
entirely of heathen origin, having in modern times been originally 
adopted by modern Christians (in violation and defiance of their 
own religion, from the slaveholding customs of the heathen negroes 
in Africa), who afterwards justified and sustained it by the 
perversions which have been reviewed. Such slavery is also a 
state or condition of permament public and private war, as we 
know from the obvious fact, that it is at all times and under all 
circumstances, supported by public and private fraud, force and 
violence, and by no other means, as fully and as completely as any 
other form or mode of war is ; and also from another fact equally 
striking, that it is equally destructive to the public prosperity 
and private happiness of every country that allows and pursues it, 
as any other kind of war is. The constant operation of all the 
evil passions engendered by it, between the enslavers and the 
enslaved, necessarily produces this effect, as has been fully exem- 
plified in every slave country both in ancient and modern times. 
Hence both slaveholders and slaves are always discontented and 
unhappy. But besides this, it so interferes with all the free inte- 
rests and policy of every country, in which it prevails, that none 
of these interests and policy can be harmonized with it and 
successfully pursued, so long as the curse is permitted to exist 
unchecked and uncontrolled. Thus, none of the great political 
measures, so much controverted in the United States, can ever 
be satisfactorily adjusted and settled, until slavery is entirely 
abolished and destroyed — the reason why human slavery possesses 
such immense political influence being because it is so highly 
political in its own nature, which is proved by the well known 
fact, that it has done, and is doing, more to diminish the public 
temporal prosperity of mankind, than any other single public 
institution in the world. 

The belief is almost universally prevalent in the Chri tian 
world, because it is generally countenanced by the Christian 
clergy, that the Scriptures do not teach what is generally called 
<' politics" or political action at all, and that Christians, as such, 
have nothing to do with such action — than which a greater heresy 
never existed, for the Bible is the strongest and best political 



90 ANTI-SLAVERY BIBLE AEGUMENT. 

book in the world. A book which utterly condemns all sins, 
political as well as others, must necessarily be a political book. 
The word " political" is not found in the Bible, to be sure, any 
more than the word " moral" is, because the first was not in the 
Hebrew and Latin, nor the last in the Greek language, but political 
action is just as strongly described in the Scriptures as moral 
action is — and they never separate those modes of action in 
description, as we customarily attempt to do, in our account of 
them, because they are really inseparable in their natures, as all 
their effects prove. This pamphlet, for instance, will be universally 
considered as of a moral nature, but nothing can be more highly 
political than its tendency, because that tendency is to destroy the 
greatest single political institution in the country. So is every 
other book of a political nature, the tendency of which is to affect 
or modify the public temporal interests of society. All public 
institutions which produce that effect are of the same nature, 
which the etymology of the words "politics," "policy," "po- 
litical," &c., clearly proves. Another heresy, connected with 
this subject, also deserves exposure and reproof. Many persons, 
who acknowledge both the natural and revealed sinfulness of 
slavery, do yet contend, that no special exertions ought to be 
made against this public sin, because God will, in His own time 
and manner, deliver the oppressed slaves, as he has so often pro- 
mised to do in the Scriptures. It is most true that God will even- 
tually deliver the slaves, whether we repent of the sin of enslaving 
them or not ; but the whole analogical teaching of the Scrip- 
tures, as well as the promises of God teach us, that He will do so 
by our own national destruction, unless we seasonably repent and 
reform from the sin of slavery by voluntary abolition. There are 
numerous cases of the Divine threats against the great sin of 
oppression recorded in the Scriptures, every one of which, with 
the exception of Nineveh, were carried into execution, and that 
exception was made only upon repentance and reformation — all the 
other cases being those of reprobation or a voluntary refusal to 
repent. All over the Scriptures reprobation and destruction are 
united together — the terrible threat in Prov. xxix. 1, being just as 
applicable to nations as to individuals. From the case of the 
Antediluvians recorded in Genesis to that of the mystical Mother 
of Harlots in the Revelation, not a single exception is made. The 
cases of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Pharaoh, of the wicked Jewish 



CONCLUSION — REFLECTIONS. 91 

Kings, of Judea, Moab, Tyre, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, &c., are 
all in point, as is the subsequent destruction of the Greeks, 
Carthaginians, Romans, &c., for the great sin of reprobation. 
From the analogy furnished by these terrible examples, we see 
clearly what our own national doom is to be, if we finally prove 
guilty of this terrible sin, in relation to our slavish oppressions ; 
we being just as certain of national destruction from that cause, 
as the Antediluvians, Pharaoh, the Egyptians, the Jews, &c., were, 
unless we follow the example of Nineveh, and repent, and reform 
our lives, as well as our national character, which we have yet a 
little time and space to do. That the Lord, in his infinite good- 
ness, may grant us the disposition to do it, is the prayer of the 
writer of these pages. 



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